“They said they’re going to be there?” Charles asked with a raised eyebrow.

“They gave a very firm maybe, which is practically a yes for them,” Crystal snapped back.

Charles frowned at that, but Edwin spoke over whatever he was planning to say.

“Of course, if you don’t want us to attend your graduation ceremony, we will respect your wishes,” Edwin said benevolently.

“Thank you, Edwin,” Crystal said, with a pointed look at Charles.

“You’re quite welcome, Crystal,” Edwin said with a polite nod.

Crystal disappeared back into her walk in closet to continue to dig for something good enough to wear under her graduation gown. Charles turned to Edwin with a confused frown.

“There’s no way her parents are going to show up for graduation, is there?” he asked sincerely.

“Not a chance,” Edwin said, still watching the closet door. “I checked their calendar and they’ve already booked two interviews and something called an ‘experimental banjo sesh’ for the same time as the ceremony.”

“God, what arseholes,” Charles muttered. “Crystal deserves better.”

“Of course she does,” Edwin said with an arched brow. “That is why we will be better for her.”

Charles’ mouth stretched into a manic grin and Edwin’s own mouth twitched at the edges with infectious glee.

---

The day of her graduation, Crystal was sweating with nerves. She had opted to finish her degree online when her attempts to make up with many of the people in her class that she had wronged had gone badly, to say the least. It was the first time in months that she was in the same room with them. It was a big gymnasium, but it was hard not to notice all the venomous looks pointed her way from almost every corner.

Crystal wiped her palms on the fabric of her gown, but the artificial fabric did nothing to wick the moisture away from her skin. She wanted to touch her cap to make sure it was sitting straight, but was worried about knocking her elaborate hairstyle down. She had gotten up early to arrange her curls into an elegant bun at the nape of her neck. It had been a bigger challenge than she expected and as a result her hair was mostly held together by two dozen bobby pins and sheer determination.

Crystal’s parents had already been gone by the time she was ready to leave for the ceremony, but she tried not to let that get her down. She had just talked to them the night before and they had confirmed their definite maybe for her graduation. She just had to have faith. They probably were picking up flowers or a cake or something. They knew Crystal was very self sufficient and could call her own cab to take her to the school.

Finally it was time to line up and walk out onto the field. Luckily, Crystal ended up in line between two boys that she didn’t recognize and who didn’t seem all that interested in her. They walked out of the gymnasium and into the bright spring day outside. Crystal was briefly blinded, but as soon as her eyes cleared she looked out into the crowd for her parents.

The field outside the gym was absolutely packed with people. There were rows and rows of folding chairs set up for the students graduating. The line steadily filled the rows in, directed by teachers in suits and skirts. Around the folding chairs were metal bleachers packed with adults and other kids alike, everyone snapping photos and waving and shouting things as the students filing into the chairs occasionally picked someone out of the crowd and waved back.

She didn’t see her parents as she walked out, but it was a madhouse. Probably they were there and she just didn’t see them. That was fine. Crystal turned around during a speech started to try and look again and got hissed at by one of the teachers, so she turned back around and pretended to pay attention.

The speeches washed over her like so much noise. She couldn’t have recalled anything that was said even if her life depended on it. Her mind was on the crowd at her back and her parents, the anxiety of not knowing crawling up her throat and threatening to choke her.

Then, finally, they started calling names and it was time to walk across the stage and claim her diploma. The school had considered ‘Von Hoverkraft’ to be her last name, so she had to wait until almost every other kid had gone before she could stand up and walk across the small pop up stage to shake the hand of a sweaty middle aged man she didn’t recognize and take her diploma.

As she did so, a camera flashed from the crowd, loud and bright and briefly blinding her. Crystal felt tears pricking her eyes and it wasn’t just from the bright flash. Someone was taking her picture and she couldn’t help but hope it was her dad, memorializing her finally finishing high school, finally becoming an adult.

Her smile turning sincere for the first time that day, Crystal walked to the other side of the stage and back to her seat feeling breathless. They were here somewhere in the crowd. They had come. They had shown up for her.

A few more kids went up to get their diploma and there was one last short speech. Everyone was itching for the ceremony to be over, so the speech didn’t last for very long. Soon, the ceremony was over and the two crowds (students and families) rushed toward each other, students merging into the bleachers while parents and siblings ran into the lines of folding chairs.

Crystal stood up, but then she froze. She was short in her sensible flats and couldn’t see over the heads of the crowd to find her parents. She started to move toward the bleachers, but it was a wild press of people and she felt a surge of panic that she wouldn’t be able to find them in time, that the crowds would deter them and her parents would leave without her seeing them.

Halfway to the bleachers, Crystal felt a man’s hand on her upper arm, pulling her to a stop. Crystal whipped around, not sure if she should be ecstatic or vicious, and looked into a familiar face. Familiar, but not the one she was hoping for.

An older man, maybe in his fifties, with red hair almost completely turned white and distinguished rimless glasses was smiling down at her. It was Charles in his living person disguise.

“Crystal, this way!” he said over the low roar of the crowd, guiding her away from the bleachers and through them toward the parking lot.

Briefly, Crystal felt irritated. She had told them not to come. But, she couldn’t hold onto her frustration for very long. She was scared and upset and hopeful by equal measures and Charles’ presence was a comforting. She eventually shook his hand off her arm so that she could instead grab his hand in hers and he smiled down at her again.

Charles led her out of the crowd and around to the back of the metal bleachers, where Crystal saw a woman in big acrylic frames wearing a little maroon beret over blonde hair peppered with white. Edwin.

“I told you guys I didn’t want you here,” Crystal muttered. “I have to get back. My parents might leave if they can’t find me.”

Charles and Edwin exchanged a speaking look and Crystal’s stomach dropped.

“We weren’t going to come,” Charles started to say. Crystal realized suddenly that he was wearing a big old fashioned camera around his neck by a strap. She swallowed around a lump in her throat.

“But, we also weren’t about to leave you here alone if they didn’t come,” Edwin said quickly.

Crystal felt her eyes filling with tears and firmly told herself not to blink. If she blinked, they would fall and if they started to fall, they might never stop.

She looked at Edwin. Edwin would tell her the truth, even if it hurt. She could trust him to do that for her.

“I’m sorry, Crystal,” he said quietly. “I followed them all morning. We only came once we were sure they were not going to make it to your graduation ceremony.”

It didn’t matter that Crystal hadn’t blinked, the tears began to fall anyway. She dashed them away viciously but they just kept falling.

“God, you must think I’m so naive,” she laughed. “You must have wanted so bad to tell me how stupid I was being. So, go ahead. Say it,” she glared at Edwin, but he only stared evenly back. “Say I was stupid for believing in them! You would be right!” she cried.

“Crystal Palace, you are the farthest thing from stupid,” Edwin said, like it was the most factual thing in the world.

“You’re a good daughter,” Charles said gently, “and you love your parents. That’s not a fault, Crystal. It’s admirable that you keep trying.”

The tears were coming faster now and Crystal gave up on trying to preserve her mascara and eyeliner and instead rubbed at her eyes, probably smearing black makeup everywhere.

“Eds! The flowers!” Charles whispered while Crystal tried desperately to get her tears under control.

She heard rustling and then when she opened her eyes it was to a huge bouquet of lilies, big pink ones with little brown spots exploding out from yellow centers, filled in all around with delicate baby’s breath.

“You got me flowers?” Crystal wobbled, fresh tears threatening to fall.

“And a balloon, but I sort of forgot those things float and it got away from me,” Charles said with a hangdog expression.

Edwin sighed at the mention of the balloon, but shook it off quickly. He stepped in to run his thumbs delicately under Crystal’s eyes, clearing away the smudged makeup along with a few stray tears.

“And, we will be taking you to that awful raw fish buffet that you like,” Edwin said as he cleaned up her makeup here and there.

“It’s called sushi, I know you know that. And, I don’t think they’ll let you come in if you aren’t going to eat anything,” Crystal sniffed.

“I dare say you will eat enough raw fish for the rest of us,” Edwin said, dry as the Sahara desert.

“And, we’ll tell everyone within hearing distance how proud we are of our amazing daughter who just graduated from high school!” Charles added with a grin.

“Yes, she’s quite amazing,” Edwin said, stepping back and judging Crystal’s makeup good enough so long as she didn’t start crying again. “Neither of us ever finished high school. She’s the first in our family to do so.”

“We’re proud parents, we are,” Charles said, elbowing Edwin with a grin that earned him an eye roll and a reluctant smile.

“You guys…” Crystal trailed off, sniffing. She clutched the flowers closer to her chest, the paper crinkling against her graduation gown. Golden pollen smeared against the cheap polyester and stuck to it, but she couldn’t possibly bring herself to care at the moment.

“Please, Crystal, no more tears. I just fixed your mascara,” Edwin complained, stepping in again to fan at her face with his hands like maybe he could dry the tears before they fell.

Crystal hiccuped around a sound that might have been a sob or a laugh, even she wasn’t sure. She threw her arms around both of their necks, drawing Charles and Edwin into a group hug. The bracketed her sides and the flowers crinkled against their backs. She felt their arms settle around her waist, their heads tilted against her own.

“Thanks, you guys,” she said thickly.

“Of course, Crystal,” Edwin whispered back.

Charles stumbled and almost knocked over his new mate from the cricket team, Mark, who gave him a dirty look and shoved him back.

“Who the hell is that?” Charles breathed, not taking his eyes off the boy swanning across the grass in the center of a gaggle of small delicate girls.

Mark frowned in the direction that Charles was looking. “Who?” he asked, confused.

“That boy! The tall ballerina one!” Charles exclaimed, rudely pointing.

The boy turned and noticed Charles pointing at him and gave him such an offended look that Charles almost shriveled up like a prune.

Mark scoffed. “That’s Edwin Payne. The dance department falls all over themselves for him, but don’t bother trying to make friends. He’s a tosser, apparently.”

But, Charles wasn’t listening. The name Edwin Payne was ringing like a bell in his ears.

---

The next day, Charles went to find Crystal somewhere in the bowels of the art department. She was the only person he felt he could rely on to understand what he was going through. She was beautiful, and mean as shit, and probably his best friend in the world. Which was saying something because he had known her for about two weeks.

“Crystal, you have friends in the dance department, right?” Charles had asked, trying to find somewhere to lean that didn’t have paint all over it. If he ruined another uniform, he was pretty sure his dad would literally kill him.

“Yes, I am friends with the Japanese exchange student in our grade who is also in the dance department. Her name is Niko, Charles,” Crystal said in a long suffering tone as she tried blending in the blues on an oil painting it seemed like she had been working on for a week.

Charles winced. Based on her tone, she had probably told him a few times before, but he had forgotten. In his defense, he was neck deep in love.

“Right, the cute girl with the white hair. And, she’s in the dance department,” Charles forged on.

Sighing, Crystal gave up on her painting and turned to Charles. “Okay. What do you want?” she asked flatly.

“I think the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen in my whole life has class with her and will you pleeeeeeease introduce us?” Charles rushed out breathlessly.

Crystal stared at Charles. Charles tried to give her his best puppy dog eyes, the ones that made all the old ladies in his neighborhood coo and ruffle his hair.

“And you can’t just walk up to him and introduce yourself why?” Crystal asked incredulously.

“Because I think I would probably die on the spot,” Charles said seriously.

Crystal let her head tip back and let out an explosive sigh. “Fine!” she groaned.

Charles jumped up and punched the air.

“But, you owe me so many chocolate milks!” Crystal said, a threatening finger pointed at Charles. “I have no idea how you hustle the cafeteria ladies out of them, but I want in!”

“It’s my natural charm,” Charles said with a grin and then dodged the wet paintbrush that Crystal threw at him.

---

What Crystal set up was a study group with all four of them: Charles, Crystal, Edwin and Niko Sasaki, the Japanese transfer student.

“It’s basically impossible to fuck this up,” Crystal had told him firmly while Charles tried not to hyperventilate in the library bathroom ten minutes before their meet up time. “Just ask him to help you with your algebra with those big wet doe eyes and he’ll be done for.”

“But, what if I ask him for help with my algebra homework and he sees how hopeless I am and he’s disgusted?” Charles asked, pulling at his hair. Transferring from a public school to a private school had a lot of difficulties, but the sudden change in curriculum was by far becoming the biggest one for Charles. He didn’t think he was stupid, but he definitely was way behind all the other students who had been at St. Hilarion’s for years.

Crystal knocked his hands away from his head and grabbed his face in her terrifying claws, squishing his cheeks. She shook him a little and Charles flailed.

“Edwin Payne is the gayest gay boy that I have ever met in my life,” she said vehemently. “And you, Charles Rowland, are the most golden retriever shaped motherfucker in existence. If he doesn’t fall in love with you immediately, I’ll eat my fucking shoe.”

“Thanks, Crystal. You’re a real friend,” Charles said wetly.

“You’re damn right I am,” she said.

Then, the bathroom door opened and a boy yelped, “Hey, what! You’re not supposed to be in the boy’s-”

Crystal kicked the door shut with her big terrifying combat boots, nailing the boy in the nose. “Fuck off, terf!” she screamed.

Charles thought he loved her a little bit.

---

If Charles thought that Edwin was beautiful from across a crowded lawn, he was an idiot, because he was even prettier up close.

He was about as tall as Charles, but he was so lanky. He had these long arms and long legs, but all his limbs were under careful precise control at all times. His hands were pretty, pale with long manicured fingers, always carefully folded or deftly handling a pencil. His face was all long lines and flat planes, like someone had crafted him out of marble or something. Except his big dark eyebrows and thick dark lashes made him look incredibly alive, every small expression made louder by the twitch of his eyebrows.

Charles felt like an idiot the second he stepped into the room with him. His hands were immediately clammy with sweat and rubbing them on his trousers didn’t seem to resolve the issue. He kept stumbling over words and talking either too loudly or too softly. He lost count of how many times he dropped his pencil on the floor or knocked the table askew with his jittering knees. He felt like an oaf.

Crystal was looking at him like he disgusted her on a personal level. Charles didn’t know Niko very well, but the intense way her big sparkly eyes focused on him gave him the impression that she was enjoying whatever incredible meltdown he was experiencing.

For his part, Edwin seemed very confused by him. Charles couldn’t blame him. He knew he was acting like a bumbling idiot, primarily in Edwin’s direction. At one point, Edwin had asked him a direction question and it had startled Charles so much he literally threw his pencil across the room. If he hadn’t wanted to sink into the floor so much at that moment, he was pretty sure based on the acidic look that Crystal shot him she would put him there herself.

When the girls took a brief break to visit the bathroom and get them all some coffee, Edwin turned to Charles with a somber look. Charles gulped audibly.

“I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel uncomfortable-” he started to say.

“Not at all!” Charles hurried to say.

“I know I can be somewhat unapproachable to people my own age,” Edwin continued.

“You’ve been aces, mate, really!” Charles insisted.

“I think it’s quite admirable that you are making an effort to improve your academics. If I made you feel any other way, I sincerely apologize,” Edwin said to his lap, looking a bit miserable.

Charles had no idea what Edwin was talking about. If he had insulted Charles accidentally during their study session, Charles had probably been too busy trying not to spontaneously combust to notice. All Charles knew was that he wanted to clear away this misunderstanding as soon as possible.

“It’s not that at all!” Charles said firmly, pressing his hand over both of Edwin’s, where they were folded primly in his lap. “It’s just that you’re proper fit and every time I look at you, I think I’m in danger of choking on my tongue a bit.”

Edwin’s eyes, previously trained on his lap, snapped up to Charles, wide and gray and beautiful. Charles stared back a little breathless. This was the closest he had been able to look at Edwin’s eyes and they were really pretty, like a pale gray, blue, green color. Charles couldn’t quite put his finger on an exact description.

Edwin’s face then flushed with color and belatedly Charles realized what he had said and his face heated, as well. Charles didn’t think he’d ever seen another bloke full face blush before. The pink went all the way down Edwin’s neck. Charles wondered how far down it went…

“Oh,” Edwin said faintly.

“Ah, sorry, that’s-” Charles fumbled, feeling all his awkwardness come back in a rush.

“No, it’s not-” Edwin mumbled, suddenly matching Charles’ stutter for stutter.

Crystal and Niko chose that moment to come back into the study room holding two steaming coffees each.

“Why does it smell like teenage hormones in here?” Crystal asked with a wrinkled nose.

“Did you guys have fun without us?” Niko asked in a sing song voice that might have been a lingering bit of accent or might have had to do with the sparkle in her eyes as she took in both of their flushed faces.

The two boys mumbled something and thanked the girls for their coffees and got back to studying quickly.

---

After the study group was over, Crystal and Niko waved goodbye and walked together toward the girl’s dorms. Charles and Edwin both hesitated on the front steps of the library.

“Hey would you-” Charles started to say at the exact time that Edwin spoke.

“It was very-” Edwin said, then stopped, both of them freezing with their mouths opening before stumbling over each other.

“Oh, so sorry, please go ahead.”

“Nah, mate. You go first.”

They both stumbled to a stop again and then fidgeted on the top step, not quite looking at each other.

Charles bit his lip and mustered his courage and asked, “Would you want to hang out this weekend?”

Edwin’s eyebrows went up. “With Crystal and Niko?” he asked slowly.

“If you want,” Charles said, keeping his face still so it wouldn’t show his disappointment.

But maybe he didn’t keep it still enough, because Edwin Payne was looking at him with all of his considerable focus.

“Would you want that?” Edwin asked. And his eyes were so odd and clear and he was looking at Charles and Charles couldn’t help but to tell the entire truth when Edwin Payne was looking into his eyes like that.

“I was wanting to take you on a date, to be honest,” he said with a lopsided smile.

And, oh, that blush was back and it looked even nicer in the fading sunlight than it had in the harsh fluorescence in the library.

“If that’s okay with you,” Charles hurried to tack on. He had never asked a boy out before. He very much didn’t want to embarrass or shock Edwin.

But, Edwin only smiled a small smile and said, “That would be quite alright with me.” Then he ripped a piece of notebook paper out of one of his many color coded spiral notepads he carried in his arms and scribbled something on it before holding it out to Charles. Charles took the paper curiously. “I look forward to it,” Edwin said awkwardly, then hurried down the steps and away across the grass.

Charles looked down at the paper in his hand. It had a phone number written across it in perfect handwriting.

"Oh, of course," the woman said with a crinkle to her brow. "I suppose your full name is a bit of a mouthful," she laughed.

Crystal didn't laugh with her. She glanced at Edwin and Charles again. Edwin was looking exasperated and impatient, while Charles looked curious but patient. She gave Edwin a small shrug. What was she supposed to do, just shrug the woman off and keep walking?

The woman glanced over her shoulder to where Crystal was looking and the crease between her brows grew deeper.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were talking to someone earlier?" the woman asked. Her smile was fixed on her face in a way that Crystal didn't like and her hand was still on her elbow.

"Uh, no?" Crystal said uncertainly. A second after her eyes darted to Charles and Edwin she realized her mistake. But, it was too late. The woman's eyebrows raised and she too glanced back to the boys, but obviously didn't see them.

Edwin rolled his eyes so hard his whole head rolled with them and started to walk away. Charles snickered and hopped after him, heading toward the subway.

"Sorry, I've really got to go," Crystal said, trying to delicately step around the woman, but her hand clenched down hard on Crystal's jacket.

"Do you recall your fifth birthday?" the woman asked frantically. Her eyes were wide, the whites showing all the way around her dishwater gray eyes. "Do you remember you told me you saw my husband?"

Her heart pounding in her chest, Crystal shook the woman off and took two quick steps back. "Sorry," she gasped, "Sorry I've got to go."

Crystal hustled away as the woman called after her "Nice seeing you, Crystal! Tell your mom I said hi!"

---

Or, maybe it started like this: a text from Crystal's mother saying she was invited to go to a party with her.

"Can you believe it?" Crystal smiled, looking down at her phone screen. "It's just so out of the blue!"

Charles' pointy chin hooked over Crystal's shoulder as he read the text message chain along with her. Crystal had read and reread the messages so many times, but she couldn't get enough. Her mom! Wanted to hang out! With her!

"She's not really inviting you here, though," Charles said uncertainly, frowning down at the phone screen. "She says here you have to go."

Crystal yanked the phone screen away from Charles with a thunderous frown. "She can be a little abrupt, but that's just my mom. It doesn't mean anything," Crystal said.

Charles frowned harder and opened his mouth to say something else, but Edwin cut him off.

"Of course," he said curtly. "You would know her best, Crystal. We trust your judgment," he said with a pointed look at Charles. "It's wonderful that you are reconnecting with your mother."

Charles frown lessened, but didn't disappear completely. "Yeah," he said slowly. "We're happy for you, Crystal."

---

No, how it really started was this: Crystal in the back of a cab sitting between Edwin and Charles on their way to an event at a haunted manor north of London.

"I still don't understand why we have to tag along," Edwin sniffed from Crystal's right. The cab that was driving the three of them trundled slowly down narrow country lanes, making all three of them sway side to side together. Crystal had airpods pressed into her ears and her phone out in her hand to at least attempt to make it look like she wasn't talking to herself in the back of the cab.

"Because, I'm nervous, okay?" Crystal snapped. That was the third time Edwin had complained about tagging along since they got into the car well over an hour ago. "My mom never asks me to come along to any of her stuff, but she asked me to come to this," Crystal continued miserably, her anger disappearing in a puff as soon as she let it out. "What if I mess up and she never asks me again?"

The phantom sensation of an arm settling over her shoulders gave her a little bit of comfort. "Hey, that's not going to happen, all right?"

Crystal could feel Charles giving Edwin a look over her head, but it still felt good to hear him agree with Charles. "Of course. You're a lovely young woman and your mother will be happy to spend time with you."

Unfortunately, Edwin was not a very good liar, especially for those who knew him well. She appreciated him trying, though. It wasn't like it was outside the realm of possibility that this could be the beginning of a renewed relationship with her mother. But, she suspected that she and Edwin shared a certain kind of pessimism that made even entertaining the thought feel frivolous.

Crystal looked up into Edwin's face, which was carefully folded into a kind and encouraging expression. The kindness was real, she could tell from the way his eyebrows tilted up and his eyes crinkled a little at the corners. But, the smile was fake. She could tell he wanted to frown in concern. Not that she could blame him. She did too.

The manor, when they reached it, was a huge stately building that was in need of some repair. But, it was still impressive, despite the cracks in the stone and the sagging of the doorways. The garden huge and lush, the drive curving around an old dry fountain with a praying angel in the center, wings spread wide, with huge red painted double doors set at the top of three curving marble steps. It was like something out of a regency romance novel.

Except that the circular drive was packed with posh high end cars parked every which way in the grass and on the gravel drive, so that the cab had to drop her off a ways off or risk getting trapped in the chaos. Crystal immediately regretted wearing sleek black stilettos as she struggled to toddle her way across the gravel on the balls of her feet. Holding onto Charles' and Edwin's hands helped, but once they got closer to the entrance and the slow moving knot of people moving inside she had to make her way on her own or risk embarrassing her mother in front of all her friends.

Inside, the manor was much more richly decorated. It was the height of summer, but it seemed like whoever designed the event had something Halloween adjacent in mind. There was glittering black velvet drapes everywhere along with sparkling purple spiders hanging from gossamer webs, waiters walking through the crowds were carrying trays with shots bubbling with dry ice and atmospheric music piped through the dark wooden halls. It sort of clashed with the warm air and orange summer sunlight cascading through the tall windows, but whoever had set it up obviously was making a big effort to stick to a theme.

Crystal looked around the foyer for her mother, scanning heads and faces with the help of the little bit of height her ridiculous shoes gave her. She could feel Charles and Edwin hovering at each of her shoulders, which certainly helped her to straighten her back and focus. She could do this.

Her mom had left directly from the gallery. She was busy, obviously. She was always busy. But, she would definitely be at the party and Crystal was at the party now too and that was all she needed.

She started to weave through the party goers, her eyes on the lookout for her mom's distinctive hairstyle, her tall willowy body shape, her intelligent (and judgmental) eyes that Crystal knew as well as her own face. It didn't take long to find her.

In what was probably a ballroom in the manor's heyday, her mom was trapped talking to a woman who looked vaguely familiar. The tense smile and crinkled brow were a combination Crystal remembered from a lot of stiff adult parties she was dragged to as a little kid. Obviously her mom needed a rescue and Crystal was ecstatic to provide it.

"Mom!" she exclaimed, stepping up to the two older women with a wide smile. She didn't even have to fake the smile, she was so happy to have found her mother in the press of strangers. She felt more than saw Edwin and Charles hang back a little, but they didn't go far. When she glanced over, both Edwin and Charles were bent over Charles' hands, looking at them like they were the most fascinating thing in the world. The urge to hiss at them to knock it off was strong, but Crystal swallowed it down at the last moment.

"Crystal! So glad you made it!" her mom enthused, a little stiff but sounding sincere enough. She pulled Crystal in and kissed the air by each of her cheeks while Crystal did the same. If she noticed Crystal glance at the empty space behind and to her right she didn't mention it.

As she pulled away, her mom turned to the other woman she had been talking to. "You remember Kat Runnover? She's been so excited to see you," her mom enthused.

As Crystal turned to her, she suddenly remembered where she had seen her before. The woman who had accosted her outside the ice cream shop stood before her, now dressed in a tasteful black cocktail dress, martini glass in hand, her eyes wide and wet and shining as she pressed the pads of her fingers to her mouth.

"Oh, Crystal! It's so good to see you again! I'm so glad you could make it," Kat warbled before pulling a frozen Crystal into a hug. Her perfume was strong, but didn't quite mask the scent of her hairspray. Crystal hesitantly patted the other woman on the back.

"Now that you're here, we can finally start the party! Just a moment I have something I have to set up. Be right back," she sang, waving with the fingers still clutching the stem of her glass before dodging through the crowd toward the back of the room.

The second the woman was gone, Crystal turned back to her mother. Gone was the warm socialite smile. Instead her mother looked tired and cranky, her eyes roving over Crystal's dress and heels and hair, her mouth twisting into a moue of distaste.

"It certainly took you long enough to get here. Did you walk all the way from London?" he mother snarked, snatching a cocktail from a wandering waiter and almost downing the whole thing in one swallow.

"There was a lot of traffic," Crystal said awkwardly. She tried to pull down the hem of her skirt, but there wasn't a lot of give to the fabric. She felt incredibly self-conscious under her mother's gaze and already resented that she had made her feel that way. "Kat, huh?"

Her mother scoffed. "Poor Kat. She's never been the same since Stephen died. This is another one of her awful death day celebrations. They just get more unhinged every year." Crystal's mother stopped and gave her another assessing look. "She asked for you specifically, but wouldn't say why. Did you do something?"

"Just stumbled into her outside an ice cream shop. I didn't recognize her, but she recognized me," Crystal said with a shrug.

Her mother sighed heavily and knocked back the last swallow of her cocktail. "I guess it would be hard for her to forget you. After that whole fiasco back then."

Crystal frowned and forced herself not to fidget. She saw the flash of Charles' red polo in the corner of her eye moving closer, but forced herself not to react. Even if it wasn't warm and fuzzy, this was more words than she'd heard from her mother in the last month combined.

"What fiasco?" Crystal asked.

Her mother raised an incredulous eyebrow. "You really don't remember? At your fifth birthday party, you insisted that you could see her husband right behind her. Sent the poor woman into hysterics," she said with a curl of her lip.

Crystal winced. She did vaguely remember that, now that her mother brought it up. It had often been cited as the reason why her parents didn't celebrate her birthday, even if it had long ago become clear to her that holding the actions of a five year old against her was more than a little unfair. She hadn't realized the woman from the memories was Kat, though.

"I haven't seen any other ghosts here. At least the poor man has moved on," Edwin's voice came from just behind Crystal's left shoulder.

"Wow, even as a toddler Crystal was psychic," Charles chuckled from her right side.

Crystal wasn't sure what her face was doing, but was extremely thankful when someone tapped on a microphone, effectively distracting her mother from frowning at her face.

Kat had stood up on a low table and addressed the crowd, thanking them all for coming. Crystal tried to push her emotions down and watch dutifully, but it was hard when the boys were still talking in her ear.

"We do have a bit of a situation, Crystal," Edwin said stiffly, stepping up to her side so that she could see him clearly out of the corner of her eye. He was rubbing his hands together in an unusual gesture for him.

"Not sure who set it up, but this room must be enchanted," Charles contributed. "Seems like we're corporeal, while we're here," he explained, snapping his fingers and startling a few people who unfairly shot Crystal a dirty look. She shrugged apologetically and then shot Charles a dirty look once they had turned back around.

Kat had moved on to talking about death and her love for her husband, but Crystal was barely listening by that point.

Covering her mouth with her hand, she whispered, "What do you mean you're corporeal? Can people see you?"

"Not as such," Edwin sniffed. "But, they can feel us, we take up space, and we have weight, so long as we are under the effects of the spell."

"Why would someone put an enchantment like that on this room?" Crystal hissed.

"Crystal, hush!" her mother said from the corner of her mouth.

"Maybe someone set it up and then forgot about it?" Charles suggested.

"Or perhaps our host is about to do something ill advised..." Edwin said slowly, frowning at the front of the room where Kat was still talking, but much more emotionally now.

"I believe that the dead walk among us right now!" Kat was shouting into the microphone, mascara running down her cheeks with her tears. "I believe that with the right tools, with the right help from the right people," she smiled wetly right at Crystal, "we can finally see what's been right beside us all along."

"Oh, god," Crystal's mother groaned.

A second later, there was a mechanical thunk, and then hundreds of little fabric balls were hurtling down from the ceiling onto the crowd of people below. As they landed softly on hair and shoulders and backs, they exploded into clouds of bright primary colors, puffs of vibrant shades covering all the tastefully neutral colors of the crowd.

People started shouting right away, complaining about their designer clothing and their hundred dollar hair styles, literally shouting their fists at Kat who still stood on the table, her eyes desperately scanning the crowd.

And then people were screaming in a very different way.

"Oh, bugger," Charles grumbled, looking down at himself.

People started falling over themselves to get away from Charles and Edwin. Both of them were absolutely covered in paint, the colors clinging to them in a way that looked normal to Crystal but probably looked like something out of the Invisible Man to everyone else in the room.

Crystal was nearly bowled over at least three times as people rushed to get away from Charles and Edwin who stood placidly in the center of the room. Crystal fought against the pull of the crowd until she was able to break through and back into the empty space around them. When she turned back toward the doors, it was to see only the backs of dozens of people as they shoved at each other to escape. She couldn't see her mother anywhere.

"Really, this is quite childish," Edwin sighed, trying to brush a splash of bright red paint off of his sleeve and only succeeding in smearing the color around more.

Kat was screaming from somewhere in the house. Crystal thought she might have seen some muscular guys in off the rack suits tackle her out of the room once everyone started stampeding, but she wasn't sure. Everything had happened so fast once the screaming started.

Looking out the tall windows, she could see scores of people sprinting for the mess of cars in the circular driveway. The people who were already in their cars were laying on their horns and bumping into each other in their haste to escape.

"I don't know, mate. I think you look good in red," Charles said. Crystal turned just in time to see him wink at Edwin. Edwin scoffed in return, but looked pleased nonetheless.

"Well," Crystal said. She threw her arms out in an exaggerated shrug and then lets them slap back to her sides. "So much for mother daughter bonding."

"There will be other chances," Charles said, his expressive eyebrows folding in sympathy.

"I'm quite sorry, Crystal. Perhaps we should not have come along, after all," Edwin said quietly, his eyes looking old and tired in a way that was familiar, but that Crystal hated to see.

Crystal huffed a breath out her nose. She tried to imagine coming to the party by herself, riding in the cab by herself, talking to her mother without backup, inevitably going home to an empty flat all by herself. Maybe if Charles and Edwin hadn't come along she could have spent an interminable evening being stiff and unhappy beside her mother at the party, but somehow the prospect didn't seem more appealing than being covered in paint in an empty Manor with her two favorite dead boys.

"Nah," Crystal said with a lopsided smile. She leaned over and picked up one of the little fabric balls off the floor. It felt like a hacky sack in her hand, but was powdery with pale blue paint. "And miss you covered in paint? No way."

With a hard throw, Crystal nailed Edwin right in the chest with the ball and it exploded all over him in a pale blue cloud.

"Crystal!" he shouted, scandalized.

Charles was cackling, already loading his arms with a dozen discarded paint balls. "Yes, Crystal! That's my girl!" he laughed, whipping a bright yellow ball at her head and covering her in paint while she squealed.

And, maybe this is how this story ends: with three teenagers in various stages of life and death laughing in an empty house. With their laugher and playing spilling out of the house and onto the lawn until the paint balls finally run out of paint and they lay panting in the grass, covered in all the colors of the rainbow. And maybe the boys can drop their corporeal aspect and let the paint fall off them like a slowly dissolving paint palette while the girl has to find a shallow stream to wash the worst of it off. And maybe later they go back to the boys' office and sit in a circle on the floor and play board games until the sun comes up and the girl is snoring on their small worn love seat.

“It is not my preferred activity for revelry,” Edwin said, dry as the desert.

“Do you have a preferred ‘activity for revelry’?” Crystal asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Niko interrupted them to add. “It’s like an iconic teenager experience. I’m happy for you guys.”

Edwin frowned faintly in Niko’s direction, but held his tongue like Charles expected. Edwin was incapable of saying anything even vaguely not nice to Niko.

“Thanks, Niko,” Charles grinned, throwing himself onto the couch, even though there was definitely not room for him on the tiny loveseat. He ended up mostly sprawled across the girls’ laps, Crystal groaning and slapping his arms away and Niko humming happily and resting her bubble tea on his stomach.

“We’ve had a standing invitation for years, but this one,” Charles gestured at Edwin, who huffed and put his nose in the air, “has never been open to going.”

“Oh? Why the sudden change?” Crystal asked Edwin, her tone a little arch but mostly curious.

Edwin sighed and fiddled with the papers again. “No particular reason,” he mumbled, unusual for him but maybe he disliked all the attention.

Charles didn’t want Edwin to get self-conscious about agreeing to go to the party and change his mind, so he quickly changed the subject. “It’s like the biggest ghost event of the year! It’s super fun.”

“I didn’t realize ghosts had a social calendar,” Crystal said with a raised eyebrow.

“There are certain days of the year when spectral energy waxes and the veil that separates the living and the dead thin,” Edwin explained in what Charles thought of as his professor voice. If he was professor-ing at them, then Charles’ distraction must have worked, and he was back to feeling comfortable. “Both Samhain and Beltane mark days when the balance between light and dark, summer and winter, are perfectly balanced. This makes them ideal days for rituals regarding the dead.”

“He means that Aleister Crowley enchants a whole house every year and throws a crazy rager in it where ghosts can actually interact with the living and get drunk and all that,” Charles adds with a grin to the two girls.

“I suppose, if you want to be crass, you could explain it like that,” Edwin said crossly.

“Aleister Crowley is a ghost?” Crystal asked with big eyes “A ghost that throws Halloween parties?” she added, sounding even more surprised.

“He’s completely off his chump,” Edwin snapped, “A fake in all but the most rudimentary of magicks,” he added with a curl of his lip.

“We don’t like him, as a rule,” Charles said with an apologetic look at Edwin. Edwin was too busy scowling down at the surface of the desk to notice. “He called Edwin a, uh, what was it, a poodle something?”

“Poodle-faker,” Edwin spit, then winced, like just saying the word left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Yeah, that,” Charles sighed.

“I’m sorry, but what does that mean? Poodle-faker? Off his chump?” Niko asked quietly.

Edwin made a face like he’d rather chew on a shoe than explain what those words meant, so Charles quickly answered, “Off his chump is like, he’s totally nuts, off his rocker like. Poodle-faker is like an old timey insult that means you hang out with women too much,” Charles added that last explanation carefully, hoping that his tone got across how stupid of an insult he thought it was. He didn’t totally understand what it meant or why that was an insult, but he knew that Edwin had been in a properly awful state for days after that casual insult, so it must have meant a lot to him.

“So, he’s a monumental dick,” Crystal said dryly.

“Yes,” Edwin agreed enthusiastically.

“Why do you want to go to a party thrown by someone who’s a monumental dick?” Niko asked as sincerely as she asked every other question that ever escaped her perfect pink lips.

“Because I’ll be there to kick his spectral ass,” Crystal said with a grin that showed the sharp points of her teeth.

“No way!” Charles exclaimed, sitting up fast enough that Niko’s tea almost spilled, though her quick reflexes saved it from toppling off of Charles’ stomach and all over the girls’ laps. “You guys can’t come,” he said frantically.

“Why not?” Crystal asked, her eyebrows communicating that she was two seconds away from wanting to fight him about it.

“Because any party thrown by Aleister Crowley is a dangerous place for the living to be,” Edwin said darkly, giving Crystal a severe look. “He has no respect for anyone, but he especially does not respect the living. Or women,” he added with a troubled frown.

“Ew,” Niko said quietly before sucking her drink loudly through her straw.

“We can all go to Miss Ava Gardner’s party on Beltane,” Edwin said with a nod, like it was already decided. “She is a consummate host and a lovely woman. You’ll be safe as houses there.”

That set them off on a completely different tangent, with Crystal and Niko asking Edwin and Charles how many dead movie stars they knew and how many lived in London and what Crystal and Niko could possibly do to earn a polite introduction.

They never quite circled back to why exactly Edwin wanted to go to Crowley’s Halloween party. Charles was happy that Edwin wanted to go, he had been trying to get him to agree to go for literal decades after all, but the lack of explanation was concerning. Crowley was shite, but the party was fun and it was a huge get together for all of undead London. Charles had been a ton of times, though it was a lot less fun without Edwin there.

Charles tried to push his concerns down. Edwin had agreed to go. Charles didn’t have to be let in on every little twist and turn of his best friend’s thoughts, he could just be happy that they were together.

---

The night of the party, Charles was a mess of nerves. Edwin seemed nervous as well, though Charles expected that had more to do with his anxiety over running into the host and less to do with the party itself. Charles got the impression that Edwin had never been comfortable around people when he was alive, based on the stories that Edwin told. But, Charles had never seen Edwin act anything other than confident and self-possessed in person. Still, Charles wanted the night to go well so badly that he could almost feel his stomach doing flips below his ribcage.

The girls had decided to aggressively have fun without them. They were both decked out in beautiful creative costumes. Charles definitely appreciated all the bare skin and glitter and makeup and Edwin seemed to be fascinated with the pageantry of it all.

Crystal was dressed in huge curling demon horns, red glitter, and a series of sinfully suggestive black leather body harnesses under a tiny halter top and distressed shorts and huge platform boots that looked like they were built with curb stomping as the one and only activity in mind. Niko looked like a dream in pastels and holographic fabric, every movement she made shining and glittering back in prismatic halos of color.

“I’m an angel alien. I think,” she said, adjusting a headband with pink pompoms on bouncing springs on top of her head. The pompoms bounced cutely every time she moved.

Charles barked out a laugh. “Hell yeah you are,” he agreed with a grin.

Edwin curiously fingered her plastic holographic skirt, watching the play of the warm orange light of the office lamps play across it. “You look enchanting. I can barely bring myself to look away from you,” Edwin said with a smile that Niko shyly returned.

“Am I enchanting?” Crystal asked with a teasing smile.

“You’re terrifying,” Edwin said, straightening from examining Niko’s outfit and trying to suppress of a smile of his own.

“And hot,” Charles added with a wink.

“Perfect,” Crystal declared, “Just as I intended.” She flicked a curl over her shoulder while Niko giggled.

Not much later, they were all off. The girls had an impressive itinerary of clubs and bars and parties planned out, but the boys had only one location in mind.

Every year Crowley’s Halloween party was held in a different location. That year it was being held in the Ragged School turned museum down in the East End.

By the time that Charles and Edwin got there, just as the sun set below the skyline, ghosts from all over the city were flowing into the building. The lights were on inside, making every old broken down window shine out into the near darkness of the crisp autumn night like a beacon. Music poured out of the open front door, an odd mix of music from all manner of eras and time frames. The nearby canal gave the chill a humid tinge, making the air around them feel even colder than it really was.

“It feels morbid, doesn’t it?” Edwin asked, frowning up at the squat square facade of the school. It wasn’t grand or beautiful like some of the old buildings left behind from Edwin’s time. Charles thought he might have read somewhere that the building was a warehouse before it was converted into a school for the city’s poorest children sometime around the end of the 1800s.

“Suppose it’s just because we’re school boys, init?” Charles asked. The building did look a little ominous, even with the bright lights and music and all the ghosts slowly making their way inside.

“You ready?” Charles asked with a smile, thinking it was probably better to move inside rather than linger and wonder about times past.

Edwin took a deep breath and visibly straightened himself, his chin tilting up, his shoulders pulling back.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I think,” he said doubtfully, despite his stiff posture.

“Brills,” Charles smiled. “Let’s head in.”

The inside of the Ragged School was absolutely packed with an eclectic mix of people both living and dead with the odd scattering of other kinds of supernatural creatures. The museum itself was pretty sparsely decorated, from what Charles could see through the press of the crowd. It definitely looked like a school, with glimpses of old wooden desks in big empty classrooms and a nice open staircase in the front hall with a polished wooden balustrade. It was obvious that the bits near the front entrance had all recently been repainted and polished up. Charles wondered if it would continue to look that way through the whole school.

Charles and Edwin didn’t have much of a chance to investigate, as they were quickly recognized by a knot of ghosts lingering near the front door.

“The Dead Boy Detectives themselves!” a pretty young man with curly hair and mutton chops said with a cheer.

“You’re both here!” a young woman with her dark hair shaved close to her head exclaimed in surprise. She was hanging from the neck of the young man who had spoken first, her dress so tiny that Charles would have blushed if he was able to.

“Are you on a case?” an older woman with a mischievous smile asked from their other side.

Charles recognized most of them from previous cases, though it was hard to remember while he was trying not to look at all the soft dark skin the young woman had on display. He thought that the guy with the mutton chops might have been haunted by a devil dog or something twenty years ago.

“Not tonight,” Edwin said shortly, nodding to them all.

“Yeah, just here for a bit of fun,” Charles said, winking at the older woman, even though it was the young couple who laughed.

“If you want to avoid Crowley, stick to the first floor,” the older woman said to Edwin with a knowing smile. “He thinks he’s holding court up there, but really he’s just making it easy for rest of us to avoid him.”

Edwin perked up a bit at that, some of the tension leeching out of his shoulders. “Thank you for the tip. I will do that.”

And then they were being buffeted through the crowd, bouncing from one group of ghosts to another. It was almost like a who’s who of spirits that the dead boys had helped or talked to or bargained with in the past thirty years. Everyone seemed happily surprised to see them and everyone was eager to talk. It was times like this that Charles was reminded of how deeply they had ingrained themselves into the supernatural tapestry of London.

Charles felt a little bit like he understood why girls fantasized about being the prettiest girl at the ball, because that night Charles certainly felt like one.

At some point, someone pressed a red solo cup into each of their hands. With a laugh, the ghost had explained, “It’s enchanted!” which made Edwin frown and Charles smile.

Edwin opened his mouth, probably to ask for the exact specifics of what kind of enchantment was on the cup, but Charles was already knocking it back.

It bubbled across his tongue in a familiar tang of sour and hops that Charles recognized from the bottles of bitter he and his friends used to sneak behind the school gymnasium after games. The taste of nostalgia was so strong it almost brought tears to his eyes. He had almost forgotten what it had tasted like, but that was it exactly.

“Charles,” Edwin sighed in exasperation. “Really. You should not drink things handed to you by a stranger.”

“I’m not a stranger,” the stranger said. “You boys saved my pet goldfish from a hungry selkie three years ago. I owe you one.”

“See?” Charles said, elbowing Edwin gently with what he knew as a cheeky smile. “He’s an past client. We can trust him. Try it!”

Edwin looked doubtfully at the liquid in the cup. It looked like nothing more spectacular than tap water, but Charles knew that it wouldn’t taste like it.

After taking a bracing breath, Edwin tipped the cup up and took a sizable swallow. When he brought the cup back down, his eyebrows were raised in surprise.

“Oh,” he said faintly. “That tastes just like the wine tonic my mother used to make me take as a child.” He turned to Charles in surprise.

“To me, it tastes like the beer me and my pals used to sneak after school,” Charles said.

“And to me, it tastes like Jack Daniels and tears,” the strange man said mournfully. “Cheers, boys. Enjoy the party,” he said and then wandered off, sipping from his own red solo cup.

The party got noticeably more blurry after that.

Charles and Edwin kept their cups in hand and kept drinking from them. No matter how much they drank, the cups never seemed to empty, so they never had to wonder where they could get more and didn’t keep much track of how much they had drank. At least, Charles certainly didn’t. He couldn’t speak for Edwin, but it felt like he was keeping pace with Charles.

Edwin had stuck close to Charles since they entered the party, but the drunker they got, the closer they became. First, they started leaning on each other, then Edwin looped Charles’ hand around his elbow when he started stumbling, until eventually they were mutually clinging to each others’ arms to stay upright.

The happiness that Charles had felt when they first entered the party just kept building. He felt warm and comfortable, even more so when his own enjoyment was mirrored in Edwin’s face. Everyone was so happy to see them, they laughed when the boys stumbled and helped right them again, pretty men and women kept touching Charles’ sleeve hair and older women carefully fixed Edwin’s hair or righted his bow tie.

Charles felt like he was on top of the world. So, when he heard one of his favorite songs come on over the speakers set throughout the house, he didn’t hesitate.

“Come dance with me!” Charles insisted, already dragging Edwin into the middle of a nearby classroom that had been repurposed into a dance floor. The desks had all been pushed into the wall, a small knot of people already swaying in the center.

Edwin stumbled, his hair falling over his forehead for the thousandth time that night.

“Charles,” he mumbled, “I can’t dance.”

“It’s okay. It’s not that kind of song,” Charles assured him, pulling him into the knot of other dancers.

England Belongs to Me by Cock Sparrer was blaring over the speakers and people were jumping and banging their heads, but Charles wasn’t paying attention to anyone but Edwin. Edwin looked uncertain and ungainly, his long legs becoming so much less certain as they both became more and more drunk. But, his eyes were stuck on Charles, watching him, waiting for him, and it made Charles feel like he was at the center of the universe.

“It’s easy!” Charles shouted over the music. “Just bounce up and down!” Charles said, grabbing both of Edwin’s hands in his and popping up and down on the balls of his feet to the rhythm of the music.

Edwin tried to follow his instructions, but he looked self conscious. He squeezed Charles’ hands in his and looked down at their shoes which was just not the thing, was it? Charles let go of Edwin’s hands after the second verse and instead wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him close.

“Just move with me,” Charles said with a grin and a squeeze. Edwin still looked completely lost, but now he also looked a little flustered which was perfect in Charles’ opinion. Charles kept bouncing, but now he also swayed side to side. After only briefly hesitating, Edwin put his arms around Charles shoulders and let him move him.

And then the song changes and Pure by The Lightning Seeds came on. The crowd around them was laughing and dissolving and then coming back together as new people took to the floor. Charles and Edwin stayed where they were, swaying, pressed together.

Charles looked into Edwin’s eyes and they were so intense and pretty in that moment. Edwin was a pretty boy, Charles thought, in a different way that people sometimes called Charles a pretty boy. People called Charles pretty because he had an earring and he styled his hair. Charles thought Edwin would look pretty no matter what he wore or what he did with his hair.

They swayed together, looking into each other’s eyes for longer than either of them would have been capable of doing sober. Charles remembered the song that was playing, the way he used to listen to it on loop the month before he died. The guy who was on the cover of the cassette, Ian Broudie, was cute in a way that Charles hadn’t let himself think about back then. But, when he would lay on his bed and close his eyes he would imagine that the singer was there in his room with him, singing him a love song with soft lips and softer looking hair and big glasses that made him look sweet and inviting.

Before Charles noticed it, Edwin’s lips were on his, soft as the Charles back then had imagined the boy in the song’s might be, sweeter than any kiss he’d had before then.

Charles barely got a chance to kiss back, before Edwin was pulling away. His brow was crumpled and his eyes were afraid. Charles tought that Edwin shouldn’t look so afraid, especially not right after kissing him.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t,” Edwin swallowed and his throat clicked, his adam’s apple bobbed against his collar. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“I liked it,” Charles said. He heard the slur on his voice, so he repeated himself just in case. “I liked it,” he grinned and leaned in. “Do it again?”

Edwin met him halfway and they were kissing and swaying and music was playing. Someone whistled and clapped and Charles had enough thought to take a hand off of Edwin’s shoulder and point his middle finger in the general direction of the whistler to the raucous laughter of the crowd.

They kissed and danced and the music kept changing. It felt a bit like the room was spinning, but Edwin felt solid and perfect, so Charles just held onto him and kept kissing him until long after a living boy’s lips would have gone numb.

---

At some point, Charles and Edwin ended up on a couch.

“This does not seem historically accurate,” Edwin had muttered into the couch cushion, but by that point Charles was too invested in kissing every square centimeter of Edwin’s long beautiful throat to bother engaging in talk about Edwardian furniture.

“Perhaps you boys should get a room,” a feminine voice laughed from somewhere nearby. Long acrylic nails glided through Charles’ hair, scratching his scalp. “I think you’re scandalizing some of the geezers.”

“Don’t care. Fuck off,” Charles grumbled, waving a hand to banish the heavenly nails. Whoever she was, she laughed and removed her hand. Charles fumbled around until he found Edwin’s hand on his waist and slapped it onto his head instead. Edwin seemed to get the message and started scratching his short nails through Charles’ hair.

Edwin was laid out on a hideous plaid couch, his long limbs splayed out, his bow tie long gone, his shirt unbuttoned. His hair was a mess and his lips were wet with Charles’ spit. Charles had no idea how they had gotten to the couch or even a vague idea of where they were in the building, but he was glad to whatever drunken stumble or nice friend had gotten them there. They must have been at the edge of the party. There were a few people talking or necking in the room with them, but it was a lot wherever they were than it had been earlier.

Charles was cradled in the basket of Edwin’s legs, his strong thighs squeezing Charles’ hips every time he did something especially clever with his mouth. Somewhere in the back of Charles addled brain he knew he was hard and that Edwin was hard and that he had been rocking himself into Edwin for however long it had been that they’d been making out.

A small voice was starting to panic somewhere in the soupy mess of his brain. Edwin loved him. Charles had told Edwin that he didn’t love him like that. And now Charles was grinding Edwin into a dusty couch in the back of a house party while they were both drunk off their asses. That was not a respectful way to treat a friend.

Charles reached over the edge of the couch and grabbed his solo cup, tipping a huge swallow down his throat. His thoughts became pleasantly unfocused again.

Pushing himself up Edwin’s body in an indecent drag, Charles mouthed at Edwin’s ear. “You feel so good,” he groaned, thrusting down hard. Edwin gasped and moaned, thrusting up to meet Charles, the hand not buried in Charles’ hair reaching down to grab Charles’ ass and pull him against him harder.

“Oh-kay. Everyone out,” the woman’s voice from before called out through the room.

There was grumbling and laughing as ghosts and creatures started to slowly trickle out of the little back room.

“Who gave them solo cups?” someone asked in exasperation as they walked by. “They’re practically babies.”

“Jerry,” someone said with a snort.

“Jerry!” a number of people chorused their discontent with poor Jerry, but Charles didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to think about the cup, he just needed every thought that wasn’t about Edwin and how to make him make that sound again to go away.

Charles reached over and fumbled for his cup again, almost knocking it over. He tipped it back, his throat working to swallow and swallow and swallow until his stomach rebelled at the thought of swallowing more. Then, he passed the cup to Edwin, who wobbled his way up onto his elbows so that he could do the same.

Whatever happened after that was indistinct. Charles remembered more moaning, from both of them but especially from Edwin. He remembered the taste of Edwin’s skin and the feel of his soft hair between his fingers. He remembered pleasure singing up and down his spine and burning low in his gut.

He remembered that they clung to each other afterward and whispered sweet words against each other’s lips and nuzzled together so tenderly. No one had ever touched Charles as gently as Edwin did, but Charles would never be able to remember the words they whispered to each other as they did so.

And, even though ghosts don’t sleep, something like it must have stolen over them eventually, because Charles couldn’t remember anything after that.

---

If Charles had felt like a princess during the party, he felt like the scum of the earth the next morning.

It didn’t seem fair for ghosts to be able to get hang overs, but Charles couldn’t come up with any other explanation for why his head was pounding like it was. Even when he was alive, he had never gotten a hangover before, but he supposed enchanted endless solo cups were probably stronger than the cheap beer that his mates would steal from their parents.

Charles pried his eyes open to blink at the sunlight bright room and saw Edwin blinking tiredly at him from about two inches away. Charles screeched, lurched backward, and fell painfully onto the dirty floor beside the couch.

“Charles?” Edwin asked sleepily, leaning over the side of the couch and looking at Charles with concern.

But, Charles couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look at his pale throat still plainly visible against his open collar, or his mussed hair that had felt so soft between Charles’ fingers, or his frowning mouth that had gasped and moaned just the night before.

“I know what he sounds like when he cums,” Charles thought wildly, before shooting to his feet in a burst of adrenaline as that thought seared itself into the inside of his skull, something he could never unthink or undo or bury.

“Are you alright?” Edwin asked, looking distinctly more concerned.

“Yeah! Brills! Perfect!” Charles shouted, his voice strangled and awful even to his own ears. Edwin’s face was folding into a more severe frown. Charles had to do something to salvage the situation. “My head is killing me, though. Can’t remember a thing about last night,” Charles laughed, wincing and pressing a hand to his forehead. Luckily, his head was actually killing him, so he didn’t even have to pretend to wince.

Edwin’s face went startlingly blank, the frown and the furrowed brow dropping off like they’d never been there. Charles held his breath and felt like the world did too.

After what felt like an eternity, Edwin faintly said. “Yes. Me too.” He looked away and swallowed and very briefly a pained look flitted across his face that cut Charles to the quick.

“No no no,” Charles thought. “That was wrong. That was the wrong answer! Fuck!”

Edwin sighed and began doing up the buttons of his shirt in sharp yanks and twists of his elegant fingers. “You really should listen to me, Charles. I told you it was foolish to accept mysterious drinks from strangers. Now we might as well have not come to the party at all.”

“Ah, well. I mean. It wasn’t that bad,” Charles stumbled. His heart was pounding in his chest and Edwin wasn’t looking at him. “It was a lot of fun before we started drinking, yeah?”

Edwin ignored him, running a hand through his hair to try and neaten it, though the effort was wasted. His hair was too mussed to be fixed by a little bit of finger combing.

Climbing to his feet, Edwin began to pull his clothing straight. But, it still looked rumpled, even to Charles’ untrained eye. He wondered why Edwin didn’t just imagine his clothing neatened like he usually did. He wondered if Edwin was as flustered as he was.

“We ought to be getting back to the office. The girls are likely wondering where we are,” Edwin said stiffly, opening the old wooden door out to the corridor and striding out. The school looked different in the daylight. The glass was old and dirty in the unfinished part of the museum, making the early autumn light look strange and anemic on the peeling paint and scuffed wood.

“Wait, Edwin,” Charles hurried after him, but Edwin didn’t slow down. His long legs ate up the distance down the corridor toward the general direction of the front hall. “I said wait!” Charles grabbed Edwin’s wrist.

Edwin stopped suddenly, twisting his head to the side to pin Charles with a venomous look.

“Do you have something you want to talk about, Charles?” he snapped.

Charles felt pinned to the spot, like Edwin had pinned him to a piece of corkboard like a bug. “Well,” Charles mumbled. He hesitated. He knew what he should say. He knew he should come clean and admit that he did remember what had happened, but there was a rock in his stomach and his tongue felt too numb to get the words out. “Well, no, I guess-”

“If you have nothing to say to me, then let’s get on with business as usual. Shall we?” Edwin asked.

He looked brittle in that moment, like he had spun himself up a facade made of glass and if Charles so much as touched him the wrong way he would shatter. Charles had done that to him, to his best friend in the world.

Charles let go of Edwin’s wrist. He felt small and pathetic and that he likely deserved much worse than Edwin snapping at him.

“Yeah. Okay,” Charles croaked.

Edwin looked at him for a long time, but eventually he nodded and turned back around. He started walking again, this time at a more reasonable pace. Charles walked just a step behind him and tried to force down all the feelings swelling up in his chest with nowhere to go.

He hadn't really expected to move into it. That had been a spur of the moment decision sometime after escaping from Mr. Oz and the belfry team dissolving. He had bounced around various apartments and safe houses, but everywhere felt like it was already owned by somebody else. Either it was someone else's patrol territory or held the memory of some past breakdown of his or a nasty confrontation with a friend or family member. In comparison, the bay didn't really belong to anyone. It was a liminal space where people who didn't belong sort of got stuck sometimes, but mostly it was just home to a lot of smelly fishermen and shady smugglers.

So, Tim's bed didn't rock in the waves while he stared up at his water stained ceiling, he didn't smell the salt of the nearby Atlantic ocean or hear the crash of the waves on the rocks (bays don't really have strong wave action, the water's not deep enough). But, it was still more comfortable than any beds he could remember calling his in the recent past.

It probably helped that Bernard was there too.

"So, what did you say?" Bernard asked, scandalized.

"I told him to fuck off, basically," Tim said to the ceiling.

"No, you didn't!" Bernard protested, pinching the inside of Tim's elbow hard. Tim squeaked and vainly tried to wiggle away.

"Not those words exactly!" Tim whined. "But, that was the idea! I think I said something like 'don't worry about me' and then I sped off."

"Oh, very dramatic," Bernard teased, his mouth pulling into a Cheshire grin that made his eyes crinkle up in the corners. That particular mischievous smile always made Tim's stomach go a little wobbly even after months of dating.

"It was. I am. Very dramatic," Tim mumbled, leaning into Bernard's space as if pulled in by a magnet. He planted his face into the crook of Bernard's neck and shoulder, puffing a hot breath against his skin that made Bernard cackle and kick his feet.

His hand came up to cup Tim's neck, his warm palm pressed to the delicate lines of the moth wings that framed Tim's throat. Bernard liked touching his mark and Tim liked it too. Gently, Tim pressed his hand against Bernard's left flank, in the center of where he knew a very faint new mark was just starting to come in.

Bernard wasn't like Tim with his endless tapestry of soul marks. He only had four soul marks: two for his parents, one for Darla, and one for Tim. When they were younger, Tim's mark had been a sleeping raccoon near Bernard's hip, something that all three of them had made no end of jokes about (mostly relating to how even Tim's eyebags soul had eyebags). Bernard's mark on Tim had been a cloud of buttery yellow cabbage butterflies that fluttered around his right collar bone, cute and happy, just the way he always pictured Bernard.

It didn't take long for Bernard's butterflies to change once they started to reconnect. A side effect of developing soul marks easily meant that they changed and moved easily as well. Bernard's little butterflies, that had for years been gray and dull beneath Tim's scars, soon coalesced and moved up his body to his throat where they unfurled into green and yellow wings with terrifying eyespots. Big Luna Moth wings that were hard to miss and even harder to hide, not that Tim bothered to try and do so.

Bernard's mark had been slower to change, but Tim expected that. Even after a few months, the fact that his mark had changed as much as it had was very impressive and a little scary. Tim hadn't seen the state of his raccoon when they first started dating, but he assumed it was probably a pretty sad sight. He was well aware that, from Bernard's point of view, Tim had dropped off the face of the earth without so much as a call or text to his closest friend right after their only other friend had died? Become a zombie? Become a supervillain??? Honestly, Tim still wasn't completely sure how to classify what had happened to Darla.

Either way, he knew that Bernard had gone through a very hard time after whatever happened to Darla had... happened. It wasn't Tim's place to keep track of his soul mark or it's progression, he didn't bring it up and he didn't ask about, but he would have been a fool not to take notice of it.

Tim kept his face tucked into Bernard's neck and carefully tucked his hand underneath his shirt, mindful about keeping his fingers closer to Bernard's stomach than his back. Bernard made a content sound into Tim's hair, so he pressed his palm against the curve of his waist.

He couldn't feel it, there was no zing of familiarity or instant emotional connection like what was sometimes described in cheesy romance novels, but it was still exciting to touch. It made his heart race to know that his steadily changing soul mark was underneath his hand. It wasn't clear what it would be yet, but it was big and took up most of Bernard's flank. It looked like a piece of cloth draped over Bernard's side and the little bit of color that was starting to flush the edges looked red and yellow.

Tim hoped quietly for what he thought it might be, but kept his thoughts to himself.

"I still can't believe he said that to you," Bernard grumbled after a few minutes of comfortable snuggling.

"Well," Tim sighed, feeling on the edge of sleep. "There was a time when we used to talk about everything..."

Bernard edged back so that he could look down at Tim. "Did he talk to you about getting rid of marks back then?" Bernard asked, his brow furrowed and his mouth turned down in the corners.

Tim glanced away. "I didn't have as many dark soul marks back then," he said, thinking back to the fierce surly teenager he had been only a few years ago, splattered all over with color and mostly hating that it seemed to invite so much comment from everyone around him.

"Hm," Bernard hummed, neither accepting or rejecting Tim's explanation. "Do you think he's had some removed? Maybe that's why he brought it up?"

Tim frowned at that thought. His knee jerk reaction was to say definitely not, he would know if Dick had gone through something bad enough that it meant he had to have a soul mark removed! But, he bit his tongue. Would he know that? He said it himself that they didn't really talk anymore. There was a time when Tim knew the names of all of Dick's girlfriends, his favorite TV shows, his favorite local restaurant and his regular order there. He couldn't say any of that anymore. He and Dick barely talked at all outside of work.

Bernard sniffed. "Well, either way, it's rude. That's such a personal thing to ask about! He might as well ask if you like to bottom or top instead."

The laugh that startled out of Tim made him snort until he coughed, which made Bernard cackle along while he pounded on Tim's back to help him breathe.

"Oh my god! That's so foul! God, please never say that again," Tim gasped.

"What? You don't want your big brother to ask you about your sex life?" Bernard teased. "Maybe he can give you a speech about the birds and the bees! Tim, do you need a stern talking to about taking responsibility for deflowering sweet blonde boys-" Bernard shrieked as Tim pounced on him, smothering him with a pillow to get him to stop talking.

That started a wrestling match that quickly devolved into other things which quickly chewed through the rest of their lazy afternoon. But, the conversation obviously stuck with Bernard, because he brought it up again while they ate chili cheese dogs for dinner and watched scrappy little kids play baseball at a nearby park.

"Do you think you'd ever get another soul mark removed?" Bernard asked, staring out at the ball diamond and watching a kid who couldn't be more than 8 fall face first into the dirt while attempting to slide to first base.

Tim used the excuse of the chili dog to give himself time to think on it. He clenched his right hand and felt the scar tissue pull at his knuckles.

"If I ever had another one that got as bad as my dad's, then maybe," he said slowly, feeling the truth in the words as he said them.

"But, you haven't? Had any other ones get ... corrupted?" Bernard asked, turning to look at him with one of his rare serious expressions.

Tim quickly shoved the rest of the hot dog into his mouth and wiped his hands on the napkin. He had a feeling this was going to be a longer conversation and that he knew where Bernard was going with it.

After he'd finally swallowed, Tim said, "I've had some other ones get corrupted before. Back then, I didn't have the time or energy to deal with them. So, I let them go and eventually they settled."

This was a huge understatement, but they were in a public park so Tim couldn't exactly explain how bad everything got when he switched to his Red Robin identity.

When he went to Europe to search for clues about where in the time stream Bruce could be, his body was a mess. The number of corrupted soul marks on his skin probably would have given any ER doctor or psychologist a heart attack. Kon's mark had gone black and then corrupted almost immediately afterward, his bright shining sword and shield that had once looked like something out of King Arthur's court turned into a wicked curl of black spikes that itched and blistered and was constantly bleeding. Likewise, Cassie's mark had turned odd and twisted, her sparking red and gold star on his stomach turned a rancid mustard color and seeped pus every time he moved wrong. Dick's mark had been the worst, the bright red trapeze set that had been painted across the back of his neck turning into a barbed wire fence that wrapped all the way around his throat and threatened to choke him.

Those were just a few of the worst ones. At the time, it felt like his entire soul was under attack, all his soul marks either dulling down to a sad empty gray, a cold empty black, or turning vicious, cruel and broken. He often wondered if he would have struggled as much back then if only his body wasn't fighting him every step of the way.

"So, you think it just needs time, then? They settle down eventually?" Bernard asked, tossing the remaining half of his chili dog into a nearby trashcan. It wasn't like him to waste food, but Tim understood already why he was upset.

"Not really," Tim said reluctantly. Once Bernard had glanced back up at him, Tim continued, "It's not like ignoring it fixed anything. I think it's more like I just burnt myself out. After a while, I couldn't bring myself to care about anything anymore, even my soul mates. Once I stopped caring, the marks settled down."

Bernard barked out a laugh that had nothing to do with humor. "Encouraging! So, I just have to go completely numb. Awesome."

Tim frowned and reached out to grasp Bernard's cold fingers in his own. "Soul marks are a reflection of how we feel about the other person. Not the other way around. If you can change your perspective on the relationship, even if it's just to stop caring about it, then that changes the soul mark."

"It's not all about perspective," Bernard snapped, his blue eyes flaring with anger. "Dead soul marks don't revive just because you believe the other person is alive hard enough."

"You're right," Tim said slowly, glancing around the busy park in an obvious way that he hoped Bernard would pick up on. He sure had a lot to say about the myriad ways that soul marks could be tricked into thinking someone was dead, but he couldn't say any of it in public.

Luckily, Bernard was smart and observant and gathered what Tim was saying with his eyes, his anger snuffing out in a moment to be replaced with exasperation. "Ugh," he groaned. "Mask stuff?" he asked with a roll of his eyes.

"Yeah," Tim said apologetically. "We can talk about it more back at the boat?" he suggested hopefully.

"Sure. Fine," Bernard grunted, walking away from the baseball game and the trashcan that was overflowing with hot dog wrappers and soda cans. He kept hold of Tim's hand as he stormed off though, so Tim thought he must not be too mad.

Once they had been walking for a while, Bernard spoke up again. "So, you do think I should get them removed?" he asked mulishly, his eyes firmly on the cracked dirty pavement in front of them.

Tim looked sadly at Bernard's shoulder.

Bernard only had four soul marks: Tim's, Darla's, and his parents. Tim's mark had probably been dormant or maybe corrupted for years, but it was recovering and changing. Darla's looked like some horrible amalgamation between dead and dormant and corrupted, a sickly swirl of black, gray and red on Bernard's thigh that was often painful to the touch.

Bernard's parents marks were on each of his shoulders. Tim didn't know what they used to be, but now they looked like two huge claws, long awful fingers that came to dirty vicious points with too many joints that clutched at him. Bernard didn't like to talk about them, but Tim knew that they often hurt and sometimes they even bled.

Most unfortunate of all, they were big. It would be a much more involved surgery than just removing the skin from the back of one hand. It would leave a huge scar and it might still hurt afterward anyway. Sometimes really big soul marks couldn't be fully removed. If the doctors missed some little root somewhere, they would grow back like cancerous tumors and in some cases grow even bigger than they had been before.

Bernard's parents had kicked him out of the house when he was still in high school for being gay, when he was still mourning the loss of his two best friends. He was homeless for a while and he had to work hard to piece his life back together. He should have been proud of the progress he had made, but instead he was wracked with self-hatred. So much so that he became the perfect victim for the pain cult to take advantage of.

Now, he was in culinary school, he had an apartment that he shared with three other roommates, and he was in a serious relationship with a houseboat hobo (who at least could boast of having been adopted by a wealthy man). He had started to re-establish contact with his parents that year and it ... hadn't been going well.

Tim didn't know what he would do in Bernard's position. Unlike Tim, Bernard didn't create soul connections easily. He had only a few people who had ever made such a deep connection with him. How could he tell him to throw any of those connections away, even if they were obviously hurting him? Especially considering that Tim knew first hand that soul marks could change, people could change. As much as that kind of hope was painful, sometimes it really did pay off to hold on and keep trying.

Dick's soul mark used to be a huge trapeze set sitting on top of his nape, then he became a razor sharp curl of barbed wire around his neck, but now he's a dark set of power lines across his collar bone dotted with pale blue birds. Maybe Dick had changed that much, but Tim believed really it was him that had changed, that Tim's ability to see and understand Dick had changed over time and so his soul mark had changed too.

If Tim had decided to cut Dick off his skin and out of his life when things were bad, he never would have had the power lines and the little blue birds. That was all he knew for sure.

"I don't know," Tim said quietly, interlacing his fingers with Bernard's. "I don't know what I'd do if I were in your position. But, I know that whatever you do, it will be the bravest thing I've ever seen."

Bernard snorted, but his voice sounded wet when he said, "Oh yeah? Real brave, am I?"

"The bravest guy I know," Tim agreed, lifting their entwined hands to press a kiss to the back of Bernard's.

"Asshole," Bernard laughed, turning away to wipe his face with his sleeve.

His father definitely noticed though. He could remember the way his parents would bicker over it as it was one of his father's favorite topics when he was in an antagonistic mood.

"What kind of boy doesn't have a full fledged bond with his father?" his dad would spit, as if Tim wasn't sitting right there (at the dinner table, on the floor in front of the TV, in the other room working on homework).

"Maybe if you spent more time with him than you do with your secretary, he would," his mother would venomously spit back.

From there they would be off to the races. Tim got used to tuning it out. His parents fought about everything and usually they were both right in their own ways. There was no point in stressing out about it.

Tim barely ever saw his dad. From as far back as he could remember, it had always been just him and his mom in the big house hidden away in the carefully manicured hills of Bristol. There had been a steadily cycling circle of other women in the house: maids, nannies, tutors, that sort of thing. But the only constant was his mother. His father would appear randomly, often only for a few hours or only to sleep and then jet off to a meeting or a lunch date or whatever important thing he had to get to next. Of course Janet's bird was an eye dazzling splash of color across Tim's pudgy little hand. He loved her. She was his whole world. He had school, he had his house and he had his mom. Those things were always the same even if other things changed.

But, his father was right too. It was unusual for there not to be more color in his father's soul mark. If anyone ever noticed how dull his mark was, they would whisper and they would question just how well things were going in the Drake household. Tim knew that the symbol on his hand bothered his father too. There was a lot of debate over what the actual images associated with a soul bond meant, but the most widely accepted theory was that it was likely related to what your soul felt like to the person who had your mark. A soul mark of a sledgehammer and a shovel begged a lot of questions, though no one in polite society would have ever asked Jack Drake any of them to his face.

Just like no one ever asked how bright the colors were in the soul mark Jack wore for his son. In fact, Tim had never seen his own soul mark on his father's body. His mother wore his, a soft brown rabbit curled up in fragrant green grass, proudly on her breastbone for anyone to see. Tim's father said that his mark was on his back, but never said what it was and Tim never saw it. Whenever Tim asked about it, his mother would pointedly turn away or sometimes leave the room and his father's answers were abrupt and concise, not inviting of any more questions.

Even at a young age, Tim knew enough to know that meant he was walking on thin ice.

Tim's soul marks were a pain point between his parents, probably not their greatest pain point, but still significant.

As an adult, Tim often wondered if that was why his father insisted on him attending boarding school once he graduated from elementary school. Was it to punish his mother, to encourage her mark to fade in color, to at least make them match if his mark was meant to be so faded?

Tim would never find out.

His mother's mark still sat on the back of his hand, black as pitch with the edges so warped and fuzzed that it was impossible to make out what it had once been. It ached when it rained and the skin always cracked and bled in the winter no matter how much lotion he slathered on it. It was hard to hide with makeup, requiring gloves that felt like a liability when he was undercover. But, he wouldn't have given it up for the world.

His father's mark was a different story. After his dad died, the skin had warped and puckered, pulling painfully and cracking. The black spread and spread, trailing down his fingers underneath the skin like a blood infection. His fingernails had turned black and a few of them fell off. His knuckles ached all the time, they swelled up, and eventually his hand was stuck in a claw shape.

"I'm sorry, champ," Bruce had mumbled somberly, his big hand heavy on his shoulder while Leslie numbed his hand and readied a scalpel and skin graft. She had frowned down at his hand the whole time, like the sight of it offended her personally. The soul mark had been deep, with roots that dug down deep beneath his muscle and bone. It had taken over an hour for Leslie to remove it all.

Tim was sixteen and he had already had one of his soul marks cut out of him for his own well being. His hand hurt for weeks afterward, a deep ache that went far beneath the skin. Something in his head and chest felt worse, like something intrinsic had been removed along with the damaged cancerous skin. He supposed it had been.

He wondered what part of his soul had been cut away from him along with his dad's mark.

Tim wasn't sixteen anymore, grieving over a man that he was never quite able to love. He was nineteen, legally an adult, financially independent, and his body and its map of soul marks both dead, dying and thriving were his and his alone. If he wanted to feel the pain of separation, he could feel it and it was no one's business but his own. He was used to it, comfortable in it, so much so that he sometimes forgot what it looked like to other people.

So, when Damian dropped his shower caddy in the entrance to the showers in the bat cave, Tim didn't know what his problem was.

He glanced over his shoulder, hot water hitting his chest hard enough to almost sting, and wiped shampoo out of his eyes to better see what had happened. It wasn't like Damian to experience even a small instance of clumsiness. Seeing the youngest member of their team frozen with his mouth open while staring at him didn't really illuminate the situation.

"Little D? What's the hold up?" Dick asked from somewhere behind Damian.

Damian and Dick were both still covered in green monster goo courtesy of the latest citywide emergency kaiju attack. They had been held back by Bruce so he could give them a stern speech on teamwork, communication, and who knows what else. Tim had the good sense to dip out before he could get wrangled into the lecturing and hurried to wash the monster guts out of his hair before it dried on his scalp.

"Are those real?" Damian yelped, too loud in the tiled shower room, his prepubescent voice echoing off the tile. Tim raised a judgmental eyebrow at that truly impressive crack in his voice and Damian angrily cleared his voice to try again. "I mean, I can't believe you have fake soul marks! How pathetic are you, Drake?" he sneered, crouching down to gather up his expensive shower supplies and put them back into the little plastic carrier.

Tim frowned at Damian for a moment before glancing up at Dick. "What," he said flatly.

"Damian!" Dick gasped, sounding scandalized. "That's not-! You can't-! Just!"

Tim glanced down at his chest as the pieces clicked together belatedly. Ah. Yeah. He supposed his body did look a bit ridiculous when you saw it all bared at the same time.

His arms, chest, back and legs were all covered in soul marks of various sizes and color saturation. Tim really did develop soul marks easily. Being in the superhero community actually made things worse in that aspect. Getting tossed into high stress, life or death situations only seemed to accelerate his development of soul marks. So, he had the marks of fellow Young Justice members, lots of Titans that he had done missions with, many members of the Justice League, all of the bats, a string of various villains he had especially bad run ins with, and a wash of civilian friends he had made over the years.

He had tried to warn Bernard before the first time they got intimate that he had a lot of soul marks. Some people found it a little intimidating, Tim knew that. But, even with the warning it was still overwhelming for him. Admittedly, Tim hadn't considered how upsetting he would find all of the black and gray there was on his skin rather than the sheer number of marks he had. It had taken awhile for Bear to stop crying and Tim felt like an asshole for days afterward. Nothing quite compared to the experience of your naked body making your boyfriend cry...

Assuming that they were fake was a wild swing, though. Tim had not gotten that before. Lots of people were shocked once they noticed how many soul marks he had, but no one had ever accused him of faking them. Why the hell would someone chose to pretend to have so many dead or dying soul marks?

"They're real. Dipshit," Tim said with a sniff, turning back to his shower.

Damian scoffed. "If you think I'm that gullible, you've severely underestimated me."

"Damian, please!" Dick pleaded with him, seeming to have rebooted his brain enough that he could put together semi-coherent sentences again. "Tim develops soul marks easily!" He dropped his voice to a harsh whisper "It's also extremely rude to comment on people's soul marks!" he hissed.

Damian sucked his teeth and rolled his eyes. He stripped out of his armor efficiently, but left it all in a disgusting heap on the floor. Tim glared at it and hoped he didn't expect one of them to pick it up for him.

"I have that many soul marks, Damian," Dick said sharply. "Do you think that they're fake?"

"You're likable," Damian said matter-of-factly. "Drake is off putting."

"Wow, thanks," Tim said dryly.

"Guys, please!" Dick groaned, finally struggling out his own armor.

Tim's eyebrow twitched at being included in Dick's faint chastisement. He had literally done nothing but be lightly sarcastic in response to Damian's outright offensive comment. But, if he fought every little inequity thrown his way, he'd only drive himself insane.

"If Drake develops soul marks so easily, where is mine?" Damian asked, giving Tim a pointed up and down look that made Tim regret opting to use the cave showers in a visceral way. He'd rather pick monster guts out of his hair for days than have experienced that nasty look from his nastiest little brother.

"Unfortunately, I don't like you," Tim said with a feral grin, turning off the shower. He still had shampoo in his hair, but he would put up with a lot worse to escape the conversation.

Damian made an indignant squawk at that which didn't manage to quite put itself together into a retort while Dick let out another loud exasperated groan. It was satisfying to walk away with the last word, even if Tim had to do it cold, soapy and still naked.

"Well! I don't like you either!" Damian called toward Tim's retreating back, sounding flustered and stumbling.

Satisfying.

As Tim quickly changed into civvies, he pointedly DID NOT think about how he had developed a shadow of a little black cat on the inside of his right ankle the same day he met Damian. He hadn't noticed it until he was in the recovery ward with a neck brace around his neck, after all. It was just a faint washed out shadow, it never developed any colors or distinct lines and was gone within a few days. But, it had been there, for a brief moment.

Maybe Tim's mom had been right and he was a soft touch. He rubbed her blackened mark on the back of his hand while he straddled one of the civilian bikes in the auto bay. He still missed her and as he dwelt on that old grief a corresponding ache throbbing through his hand, as comforting as it was painful.

"Tim! Wait up!" Dick called, shaking Tim out of his reminiscing.

Frowning, Tim considered starting the bike and tearing out of the cave. But, that would be immature and Tim was a whole adult. An independent, mature adult with a boyfriend and a houseboat and everything.

He still squeezed the handlebars a few times. He wouldn't lie and say it wasn't tempting though.

When Dick ran up to the bike Tim saw that he was relatively clean, but had obviously done a slapdash job in the showers judging by the crusty quality of his usually flawless hair.

"I'm sorry about Damian. You know how he is," Dick said with a self-effacing smile.

Tim wrinkled his nose at Dick. "To my great misfortune, I do," he said.

"I didn't even think about your marks! I can't believe he went so long without seeing them!" Dick laughed tightly, tiptoeing so close to such a ridiculous social landmine that Tim couldn't help but give him an incredulous look.

"Yeah, I can't believe we haven't showered together before. Wild," he said, wondering who in their right mind would want to get naked with a little assassin boy who had made multiple attempts on their life.

Dick laughed awkwardly for a moment, shifting nervously back and forth on the balls of his feet the way he normally only did when he was approaching an uncomfortable topic. Spotting the tell, Tim frowned and tensed up for whatever Dick was about to say next.

"Speaking of your marks," he said slowly, looking off to the side at a beat up van they mostly used for undercover work, "I guess I haven't seen all of them at once in a long while either..."

Tim froze and waited, wondering where Dick was going with that opening.

"I guess you haven't," he prompted him, when it didn't seem like he was going to say anything else.

"Right! We haven't had any ops together in a while!" Dick said brightly, looking Tim in the eye for a moment. Tim wondered if Dick would jump onto the change in subject. Internally, he prayed that he would. He would take almost any other conversation than the one he could sense coming.

Unfortunately for Tim, Dick frowned and said, "It's just that, I don't remember so much, uh, black? In there?" Dick said uncertainly.

Tim stared at Dick and Dick frowned back down at him. Tim had no idea what he was supposed to say to that. Like, yeah Dick, sure seems like a lot of my friends and family are dead or don't talk to me anymore. Wild how that happened, huh?

Tim wasn't going to say that. Dick and him weren't close like that anymore. It was part of growing up, Tim thought, that your priorities changed and people drifted apart. Just part of being an adult.

"Yep," Tim finally said after way too long of a pause.

Dick grimaced, rubbing a hand over his face and looking around the cave like he might find a convenient exit from the conversation. Tim wondered why he even started it if he was so obviously uncomfortable.

"Isn't it painful?" Dick finally asked, looking pained himself.

Tim raised his eyebrows. That was an awfully direct question. Soul marks were often different for different people. He had met people who insisted that even dormant soul marks, ones that had just gone gray not black, were agonizingly painful. Likewise, he knew lots of people like him who had a number of black twisted soul marks that they hardly even thought about anymore unless they were reminded of them.

With a force of will, Tim stopped his hand from drifting to the scar on his right hand. The graft hadn't taken very well to the back of his right hand. Leslie had warned him that it probably wouldn't be able to, on a part of his body that had to move so much. He still wasn't sure if he regretted removing his father's dead soul mark or not. It might have gotten better over time as his own grief found a way to settle into a dead weight in his heart. Or, it might have ruined the function of his hand for the rest of his life. Only time would tell and his responsibilities as Robin didn't leave the time and space to wait and see.

"No," Tim said honestly. "Not really."

Dick gave him a look that made it clear he didn't believe him, but wasn't sure how to say that without offending him.

Tim wondered how many of Dick's soul marks were dormant or dead. Probably not many. Damian was right, Dick had about as many as he had, but his memory of Dick's skin from when he was younger was of a riot of color. Bold black lines and vibrant color spread across his muscular arms and the swells of his thighs and across the canvas of his back. There were even glittering sparkles of stars on his cheekbones and an arrow along the line of his jaw. He was a veritable mural of friendship and warmth.

Tim's skin looked more like an obituary.

"Have you ever talked to Leslie about it?" Dick asked, his voice soft and beseeching. It was the same voice he used to talk to victims who still shocky and trembling after a villain attack.

"About what?" Tim asked incredulously.

"About what you can do about them!" Dick said. "I know she helped you with-" Dick bit his lip and gestured at Tim's right hand that he had started clutching without realizing it. Angry at himself for slipping, Tim quickly put his hands back on the handlebars. "There's no shame in it," Dick added, back to his soft and gentle pleading.

"Dick," Tim sighed, "I literally just heard you tell Damian it's rude to comment on people's soul marks."

"I'm not commenting!" Dick protested, ignoring Tim's eye roll, "I'm just worried."

"Yeah, well," Tim said, using his heel to snap the kickstand up and then stomping down hard on the starter. The bike roared to life between his legs, loud and aggressive in the echoing cave. "Don't."

He revved the engine and tore out of the cave, shifting up and up until the bike was practically flying down the runway, lights flashing past fast enough to strobe in his peripheral vision.

He burst out of a secret entrance a few miles away from the manor and hit the curving roads of Bristol. The air was cold where it bit into his face and smelled of wet leaves and exhaust fumes. It was dark and damp and the exhilaration of driving too fast on wet roads wiped away the awkward conversation from Tim's mind before he even hit the freeway.

---

QUICK AND DIRTY WORLD BUILDING NOTES!

“Okay, hold on, slow your roll,” Crystal said, holding a hand up to forestall the rest of what Edwin was about to say. “None of us have any better ideas, so let’s just hear him out, okay?” she gave Edwin a warning look which he returned with a scathing eye roll, but Charles ignored that. That was baby level Crystal/Edwin bickering. He could ignore that in his sleep. If he did sleep, which he didn’t, seeing as he was dead and all.

“Right, okay,” Charles said, rubbing his hands together. It was his time to shine, both of his favorite people had their eyes focused on him, and he was ready to impress them both. “Like I said, this arsehole wants vengeful ghosts? Why don’t we give him some to hunt? You can plant some rumors about poltergeist activity online, Crystal. We know which message boards he’s been watching. And then I can disguise myself as a vengeful ghost to lure him in and then bam! We’ve caught him!”

Charles looked between the two of them with a grin. Edwin was wrinkling his nose like he smelled something bad, which was funny because neither of them had much sense of smell anymore and Crystal was rubbing a hand over her eyes. Maybe she had a headache. Charles thought he should probably try to get her to drink less coffee. Maybe she’d be open to switching to chai.

“Charles,” Edwin said slowly. “There is one very large flaw in your plan.”

“Just one?” Crystal sighs, taking her hands off her eyes so she could look at the ceiling.

“There is no way we can disguise ourselves as vengeful ghosts. If the sorcerer comes to our location and can’t feel a restless undead, they will leave,” Edwin continued, ignoring Crystal. “Also, why are you the bait in this scenario?” Edwin asked sounding significantly more stressed over that.

“Sure, we can!” Charles responded, ignoring that last bit. It seemed pretty obvious to him why he needed to be the bait. It wasn’t like he was going to let Edwin be the bait, that was just mental. “I just, you know, let myself get a little in my head, feel a little bit vengeful and tada! To the uninitiated I’ll look just like a vengeful ghost,” Charles finished with what he felt was his most winning smile, the one that made the corners of his eyes crinkle up in a way that Crystal had once assured him was ‘sinful’.

The silence that hung in the office after his explanation was long and loaded enough that Charles eventually let the grin drop and instead put his hands on his hips to glare back and forth between Edwin and Crystal.

“‘Feel a little bit vengeful’…” Crystal repeated, her voice dripping with derision.

“Charles, what-? No!” Edwin shouted, shaken out of whatever stunned stupor he had been stuck in by Crystal’s voice. “You can’t just-” Edwin’s long elegant hands flailed in front of his chest for a moment before finally digging into his carefully coiffed hair, sending all the strands astray. Charles wasn’t sure he had ever seen Edwin react like that before. He felt a little accomplished. It was hard to get a new reaction out of someone you’ve known for thirty-eight years.

Edwin took a deep breath and put his hands down flat on the surface of the desk. His hair was still sticking up in all directions. Charles suppressed a smile at the sight of Edwin so rumpled, but it was hard.

“Charles, you cannot just,” Edwin’s face spasmed a little and then he pulled himself back under control, “think yourself into becoming a vengeful ghost. It does not work like that.”

“I mean. It does a bit, doesn’t it?” Charles asked with a frown.

“No. It does not,” Edwin said with a much bigger frown.

“You’re telling me you’ve never gotten really mad or really sad and gone a little…” Charles grimaced and tilted his hand side to side, not sure what word would best describe the feeling of his physical form getting away from him a bit, like the floor going soft beneath his feet and his bones turning syrupy in his flesh.

“No,” Edwin bites out. “And even if I did, I would certainly never try to feel that way on purpose,” Edwin said acidly.

“It’s for the case, Eds!” Charles exclaimed. “It’s not like I’m saying we should make it our new hobby!”

---

In the end, no one could come up with a plan that was better than “become a vengeful ghost for like an hours tops and trick an evil sorcerer into coming to us”. There was a lot of shouting and arguing and by the end, Edwin’s hair was so crazy that he looked like he had put his finger in a light socket, but ultimately Charles’ very bad no good idea had carried the day.

The final plan looked something like this:

Crystal leaves rumors about a nearby abandoned hospital being haunted by a vengeful spirit that only appears at very specific times all over the web

They booby trap the hospital ahead of time with various hidden wards and barriers that they can lead the sorcerer into

Crystal, Charles, Edwin and a mirror travel to St Hilarion’s together

Charles and Edwin return to the places of their deaths to attempt to tap into their vengeful feelings

Once they are sufficiently vengeful, they use the mirror to travel to the hospital just at the time that the alleged haunting should occur

They lead the sorcerer into one of the various traps in the building

They release the ghosts and do something threatening to the sorcerer or something

Case closed

Charles was still not particularly happy that Edwin would also be turning himself into bait, but who would play the part of bait was a point that had been an especially sore spot for both of them. Eventually, Crystal had suggested that they both act as bait just to get them to stop shouting at each other.

Returning to St. Hilarion’s was also not his favorite part of the plan, less because he hated the place (although he absolutely did hate the place) and more because he would have to leave Edwin alone there. The timing was important, so they both would need to change as close to the same time as possible. Because they hadn’t conveniently died in the exact same place, they would have to split up for that part.

Charles didn’t like it but, Charles knew that if he voiced his discomfort, Crystal and Edwin would be eager to toss the whole plan and go back to the drawing board. Charles couldn’t bare the idea of letting the man they had been chasing go on hurting ghosts any more than he already had. So far as they could tell, the sorcerer was using vengeful ghosts and their powerful and volatile emotions to power his own magic. Even if they were vengeful, that didn’t mean they deserved to be used up and destroyed by some asshole hungry for power.

If Charles’ plan had a chance to work, he had to take it.

Once the bus dropped them off at the school, they walked to the mid point between the pond that Charles had taken his death blows in and the dormitory that Edwin had died in the basement of.

“This will work,” Charles assured Edwin one last time, his hands tight on Edwin’s shoulders. “As soon as you start to feel a little off, get back here, okay? Then we’ll close this case, eh?”

Edwin stared down at his hands where they fiddled near his waist. He hadn’t looked at Charles in the past hour and it was turning Charles’ stomach to knots, but he couldn’t toss the plan because of a little anxiety. It would work. He was confident.

“Yes. It shouldn’t take long,” Edwin said faintly. Then he turned abruptly, knocking Charles hands off his shoulders as he did so, and began to walk briskly across the crunchy brown grass toward the dormitory.

Charles and Crystal watched Edwin’s retreating back until he phased through the back door and disappeared inside.

“Maybe you should go with him,” Charles said uncertainly.

“Somehow, I don’t think Edwin will be able to focus if I’m there,” Crystal sighed. “Just hurry up and traumatize yourself so we can get this over with,” she added before stalking away toward the water.

With one last concerned look at the big hulking square building Edwin had disappeared inside of, Charles turned to follow Crystal.

It was the dead of winter, just like it had been the day that Charles had last went into the pond. The trees were bare of leaves, the grass was dry and dead beneath Crystal’s boots and the air puffed in little clouds as it exited her mouth. The water looked still and cold, even to Charles, who rarely sensed temperature unless it was fairly extreme.

All he had to do was go in the water and think bad thoughts. It wasn’t so hard. Charles could do it.

Becoming a vengeful ghost was nothing to sneeze at and it also wasn’t like an on or off switch. There was a sliding scale between ghosts who were very stable and those who were not. Ghosts were basically memories and emotions tied together by energy. The memories and emotions worked together to create the image that they presented to those people able to perceive them. A vengeful ghost was just a ghost that was trapped in a loop of negative emotions or memories. Often this loop would cause their outward appearance to warp, most often to more closely resemble their appearance at death or some negative perception they had of themselves.

Charles knew that he had let his appearance warp a few times in the past, by accident. He had always been a little susceptible to thought spirals, even when he was alive. Sometimes, when he was alone and his mind was wandering down dark paths that were better left unexplored, he would look down and see that his clothes were completely soaked. That was usually enough to shake him out of whatever mire of dark thoughts he had gotten stuck in. He would go find something fun to do or go find Edwin or just focus on breathing air into lungs that he didn’t have until he finally went back to looking like a better version of himself.

It wasn’t that bad. It happened and maybe it wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

But, Charles still couldn’t bring himself to step into that cold water on his own.

Crystal was looking at him with sympathy in her big pretty eyes. Charles forced himself to take a breath and take a big step forward. His foot broke the water and even his incorporeal skin could feel the shock of how cold the water was. Or maybe he was just remembering.

Either way, once he took one step it was easier to take the next, and the next, and the next until he was in the water up to his waist and shivering.

Charles closed his eyes and he was back there. He wrapped his arms around himself and he felt himself shivering with cold. He took a shaking breath and he could hear his old mates shouting at him, hear the splashing of the water as rocks broke the surface around him. His next breath was ragged, almost a sob. His stomach hurt, the pain so intense he almost felt sick. Yet, he had lost all feeling in his fingers and toes. That was bad, probably. It was too cold to be outside and wet. He needed to run, needed to get away, needed to-

“Charles!” Crystal was shouting his name in his ear, her small soft hand tight on his shoulder and turning him around.

The sight of Crystal shook him out of the trap of his own memories. She wasn’t there that night. If she was there, then he wasn’t still back then.

“C-c-crystal?” Charles stuttered, his teeth chattering too hard to get through her name on the first or second try.

“Shit,” she spit, her eyes huge and terrified in her pretty round face. “Okay. Out. That’s enough. Out of the water,” Crystal demanded, putting her arms under Charles’ armpits and physically dragging him out of the pond.

“Y-y-you’re w-w-wet,” Charles chattered, his wet clothes quickly soaking through her own soft t-shirt.

“You really have no room to talk right now,” Crystal grunted as she tossed him onto the dry dead grass right beside the mirror that she had abandoned on the bank.

“Fuck!” she shouted, stomping her feet and trying to wring the water out of her clothes. She was wracked with fine shivers as well, completely soaked from her ribs down. “This is such a goddamn! Awful! Idea!” she shouted at the sky.

“S-s-sor-sor-” Charles stuttered.

“Shut up!” Crystal shouted at him. “Dammit, where the fuck is-” Crystal cut herself off with a shriek so loud that it echoed off the treeline back at them.

Charles scrambled to his feet, his numb limbs barely obeying him, his legs feeling fawn weak. Somewhere in his mind, he still expected his old mates to come running at him and Crystal from some nearby hiding place, fists and rocks ready to finish what they had started.

What Charles saw instead was Edwin, or what he thought might be Edwin. It was a boy about Edwin’s size, with skin as pale as Edwin’s and hair as dark as Edwin’s. But, he was so incredibly caked in blood and burns and viscera that it was hard to make out any other features.

“I’m here,” the boy who might have been Edwin said, in a blank empty voice. The voice sounded like Edwin’s, soft and a little high, even if was breathy and barely above a whisper.

“Oh, god,” Charles groaned, stumbling toward Edwin. “Mate, w-what-” he stumbled over his words, his eyes roving over Edwin’s face. His nose, usually straight and perfect, was split in the middle, a deep gash right across the bridge that leaked thick clotted blood down and his face and over his lips. There was blood everywhere, in his hair, dried into his eyebrows, caked into the curves of his ears.

It looked like he might have been in pajamas or something like them. The clothing might have been white once, but it was burnt and dirtied and bloodied and it was hard to tell what the original color was underneath.

Everywhere that Charles looked at Edwin he found new wounds. His arm was broken, his stomach was slashed, there was shards of glass in his leg. His bare feet were blistered, at least two toes completely missing. To make matters worse, his injuries kept shifting. The second that Charles dragged his eyes away from one part of Edwin’s body to look at the next, the injury changed. Missing toes became broken ankles became a completely missing foot.

“Jesus,” Crystal sobbed from somewhere behind Charles. He could hear her gagging, but if felt like it was happening far away. He felt like he was at the bottom of the ocean with just this broken wraith of his best friend, trapped with the consequences of his own actions, in his own awful version of hell.

“Charles,” the boy who probably was Edwin said faintly. He pressed his hand to Charles’ cheek and his hand was tacky with blood. His thumb was missing. “You’re cold,” he said.

“Fuck,” Charles sobbed, tears he hadn’t realized were gathering in his eyes spilling down cold blue cheeks to wash some of the blood off of Edwin’s fingers.

“Nope, no, fuck, I’m not doing this,” Crystal said, grabbing both Charles and Edwin by their elbows and pushing them. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but she had an excellent sense of direction, because she shoved them right into the mirror. “Get that fucker and then go back to normal, you dickheads!” she shouted through her tears as Charles and Edwin fell through the mirror.

---

In the end, catching the sorcerer had been easy. He was drawn to Edwin and what he had dubbed his ‘vortex of pain and suffering’ like a moth to a flame. It had killed Charles to sit Edwin down at the end of a hallway and ask him to stay there, but it had worked. The sorcerer had walked right across one of the wards that Edwin had drawn on the floor in that very hallway hours ago and was trapped.

Charles had swung all the way around from terrified to fucking pissed by that point and took great pleasure in smashing his cricket bat into the man’s face over and over before smashing all the glass vials full of vengeful ghosts that he carried with him onto the dirty tile floor.

Spirits had run screaming in all directions, but it didn’t miss Charles’ notice that none of them got within spitting distance of Edwin.

Then it was over. The sorcerer was bleeding a lot, but Charles still felt like a ship at sea and an evil man’s suffering was too hard to hold onto and care about. All he cared about was Edwin.

He had stopped walking a while ago, the motions that the living went through to move felt far away. He floated to Edwin and collapsed by his side against the wall. Charles felt insignificant and empty, like a boy made of tissue paper that someone had breathed their sorrows into. He pressed himself up against Edwin and at least he felt solid and real.

He looked down at Edwin’s feet where they pressed into the dirty floor. They were pale and narrow, the knobs of his ankle sticking out below the hem of his pants. Charles didn’t remember Edwin having bare feet in hell. Somehow that felt like a big injustice, that someone would drag Edwin out of bed without his shoes and socks, let alone the full outfit that he wore to face the outside world like armor. Someone forced Edwin to walk into hell itself with his pale pretty feet exposed and that seemed like the kind of injustice that Charles would happily kill for.

“I’m sorry,” Charles murmured, barely more than an exhalation.

“Whatever for?” Edwin asked. His voice sounded stronger, but still sort of dream like. But, maybe that was just Charles. Everything felt like a dream a little bit just then. He felt so unreal.

“I hurt you,” Charles whispered after a moment.

Edwin took Charles’ hand in his. Edwin had beautiful hands with long deft fingers and carefully shaped nails. Charles could see Edwin’s hand through his own, which seemed wrong, though Charles couldn’t exactly put his finger on why.

“You would never hurt me,” Edwin said with surety.

Charles looked toward Edwin and Edwin tilted his head to look back. It occurred to Charles then that Edwin had much less blood on his face than he remembered. The cut on his nose was back, but it was much smaller and no longer bleeding down his face. There was still some blood crusted around his hairline and ear, but otherwise his face was clear of injuries. Edwin’s hand wasn’t hurt either, all his fingers and toes were accounted for.

“I made you look like this,” Charles said, squeezing Edwin’s hand in his and reveling in how solid he felt. Charles felt certain just then that if he could just hold onto Edwin, he wouldn’t float away or break apart.

“No,” Edwin said, frowning faintly. “A lot of other things and people hurt me before I ever met you, Charles. That’s why I look like this.” Edwin glanced down, looking at their joined hands, Charles’ blue fingers looking more solid every second that Edwin held them tight in his own. “I trust you completely, Charles Rowland. You would not hurt me.”

“Oh,” Charles said. He looked into Edwin’s eyes as they turned back to him. He looked so sure, sure enough for both of them. “I feel the same,” Charles said, gratified to see Edwin’s eyes widen a little at that.

Admittedly, Niko thought most people wouldn’t believe that she spent most of her free time these days helping two dead boys solve mysteries for other dead people. But, she liked the new turn that her life had taken. Even if it ended up with her locked in a very haunted house by herself with only two floating orbs for companionship.

“Oh no!” Niko exclaimed. “How did this happen?” she asked, reaching out a hesitant finger toward the glowing bluish ball of light that she assumed was Edwin. He bumped into her finger and she was briefly assailed by the smell of old paper and a faint feeling of warmth, like warm buttery sunlight on a bright summer day.

“She dropped a piano on us,” Charles said in a wry tone, his own warm red orb sailing in circles around herself and Edwin.

Niko glanced over at the huge upright piano that was currently half embedded into the floor of the parlor.

“Wow,” Niko breathed, tilting her head a little to better see how deeply the piano had sunk into the next level of the house. “She must be a really strong ghost. I wonder what her work out routine is like…”

“I don’t believe her calisthenic habits have an effect on her ability to throw heavy objects,” Edwin said testily.

Charles’ little blush colored ball curled tighter on his next orbit around Niko and bumped affectionately into Edwin, knocking him a few inches to the left. There was a little burst of light when they hit that left sparkling afterimages on the back of Niko’s eyes.

“Oi, how do you know?” Charles asked with a laugh. “I don’t see you doing any squats. Maybe this calls for an experiment. We can work out every day and then see who can lift a piano easier.”

Even without a face Niko could tell that Edwin was rolling his eyes. “Really, Charles,” he said.

Charles laughed, his ball doing a little spin and then looping in a circle before he went back to orbiting Niko’s head. Edwin instead floated closer to Niko, getting close enough to her shoulder that she could feel a bit of the cold radiating off of him through her jacket.

“I suppose I’ll keep an eye out for falling furniture,” Niko said faintly as she turned back the way she came and started back toward the kitchen.

“Oh, shite. I keep forgetting you’re mortal,” Charles said. “We really need to get you of here. If this ghost can move pianos, then she’s too dangerous for you to be around.”

“So long as our poltergeist friend is holding all the doors and windows shut, I don’t think Niko will be able to make her exit,” Edwin muttered near her ear. He sounded like he was just right there, so it was strange to think he was just a little orb hiding behind her hair.

Niko put her fingers up to where Edwin’s voice had come from and he bumped against her fingers again in a friendly sort of way. This time she smelled kerosene and tasted some kind of very sweet candy. It was very pleasant.

“Don’t worry about me, guys,” she said. “You just focus on helping this poor ghost out. I know how to take care of myself.”

Charles scoffed, doing another little loop at the edge of Niko’s vision. “Yeah, well. I’d have said the same thing about us a few minutes ago and look where that got us.”

“Discorporation is just a small set back,” Edwin said stiffly. “Once we gather enough energy from the nearby surroundings we will be back to our normal selves. We can investigate just fine as is.”

It was handy having the boys as orbs for the time being. The servant corridors leading off the kitchen were narrow and had no wiring for electric lights, but their orbs cast enough light for Niko to see where she was going.

“What does it feel like to be an orb?” Niko asked curiously. Turning right, she found herself at the bottom of some very narrow, very steep stairs. They looked sort of dangerous. She imagined that it was probably really hard to navigate them when your hands were full of towels or a tea tray or whatever servants for fancy english nobles had to carry around these tight passageways.

“It’s sort of like if you had to sit in a little dark cramped room and like you have a controller with just a joystick to control your body and you can only see out of a little tiny window the size of your hand,” Charles explained, doing a few more flips in front of Niko’s face. It was distracting, but if that was what it felt like to be an orb, maybe Charles was feeling under stimulated. Doing flips might be the only way he could try and make his sensory input a little more interesting, poor thing.

“A very apt explanation, Charles,” Edwin said, sounding impressed.

Charles must have been happy with the compliment, because he started to spin in tight circles around Edwin, occasionally brushing against him in little flashes of light.

“Charles! Charles, enough! You’ll make yourself dizzy!” Edwin exclaimed, though it sounded to Niko like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

“I don’t think I’ve been dizzy a day of my afterlife, mate,” Charles said with a laugh, but did stop spinning around Edwin. “Can you get dizzy without an inner ear?”

They had reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Niko inched the door open slowly to reveal a very tastefully decorated sitting room on the second floor.

Charles dodged past her as she opened the door, his orb partially phasing through her neck as he did so. The flavor of hot spicy curry and thick fluffy rice exploded on her tongue as he did so.

“Mmm!” Niko hummed, pressing her fingers to her lips. The taste and the feel of the rice felt so real on her tongue that she almost thought there really was food in her mouth. “Oh, curry!” she exclaimed after a second. “I love curry,” she sighed.

“Me too!” Charles exclaimed. “There used to be this little place on the way home from school. God, they had the best curry. When I was a lad, it was so hot it almost burnt my tongue off, but I just couldn’t get enough!”

Niko smacked her lips a few times, savoring the lingering flavors that were quickly fading from her mouth and stepped into the room. “Well, you have excellent taste. I think I’d die for a whole plate of that,” she said very seriously to orb Charles.

Charles stopped his constant movement for a second.

“Wait. I’m sorry, did you just taste my favorite curry?” Charles asked.

“When you two bump into me I smell and taste all kinds of interesting things,” Niko explained.

“Whoah. That’s-”

Whatever Charles was about to say, it was cut off by Edwin talking over him. “Charles, Niko! Our ghost is here!”

When Niko turned to look she found that Edwin was right. There was a middle aged woman in a very tight and modest gray dress buttoned up to her chin was standing in the corner of the room glaring at her. The color had completely washed out of her, like she had stepped out of a grainy black and white film, and her eyes dark pits in her angular face.

“No one ever understands,” she said, her voice wobbling. Her hands were clenched in trembling fists by her side. “No one ever NOTICES!” she shouted, black tears overflowing and running down her face. “No one ever APPRECIATES all that I DO!”

“We’re not your family, lady! Give it a break!” Charles shouted, darting over to hover protectively between Edwin and Niko and the angry ghost crying in the corner.

“Charles, please do shut up!” Edwin shouted back, sounding stressed and more than a little scared.

“I’m sorry that nobody appreciates you,” Niko piped up, clasping her hands in front of her. “That must be really hard.”

Both of the orbs floated closer to Niko, but she kept her eyes trained on the crying woman. She looked so sad. It didn’t excuse her dropping a piano on her friends, but Niko still felt bad for her.

“It… It is hard,” the woman agreed after a long pregnant moment. She dashed her tears away with long delicate fingers and frowned out the window. “It is very hard when you work your hardest at something and never receive a single compliment or thank you.”

“You’re so right,” Niko nodded along. “One time I volunteered to make the collage for a group project in one of my classes. And, I spent all day gluing photos and glitter hearts and string to poster board. And the day of the presentation, none of my classmates even said thank you or said anything about my glitter hearts. That really hurt my feelings.”

The woman started to cry again, pressing her own elegant looking hands to her chest. “That’s just awful! I am not sure what ‘glitter hearts’ are, but I would have complimented you for the effort!”

“Thank you,” Niko said sincerely. “You seem like a really kind and thoughtful person.”

The woman started to cry harder. “Thank you,” she gasped.

“What is happening?” Charles whispered, though it was too loud to go unnoticed in the small room.

“Be quiet!” Edwin hissed.

“I know that it doesn’t feel nice when you have to point it out, but can I ask what you feel is going unappreciated?” Niko asked gently.

The woman threw her arms out wildly, tears still streaming down her face. “Everything!” she exclaimed. “I built this house from the ground up! I practically drew up the architectural plans myself, because James was just useless at it. I picked out all the furniture, saw it all delivered and arranged, picked out the rugs, the drapes, the decor! I built this home entirely by myself so that my family could live here and be happy and then I worked myself to death to make it so!” the woman sobbed loudly, the sound wracking her whole body and making her tremble. Faintly, the objects on the shelves began to vibrate. “All of that and now they’re just going to tear it down and turn it into-into-” she took another great gasping breath “a strip mall!” she shouted before collapsing into tears.

They all stood awkwardly for a while, avoiding each other’s eyes while the lady ghost in the corner cried and sobbed.

“The drapes are really very lovely,” Niko commented, reaching out a finger to carefully trace the line of a faded green stem woven into the heavy fabric.

“They really are,” Edwin agreed. “They draw the eye and really warm up the room.”

“Thank you,” the woman sobbed. She took a few steps forward and collapsed onto one of the nearby settees. The objects on the shelves stopped shaking. “I worked so hard while I was alive because I loved my family. But, all my work went ignored and now it’s been completely forgotten. It makes one feel rather unloved, doesn’t it?” she asked tearfully.

Niko walked over to sit beside her. She took her delicate hands and folded them between her own. The woman’s hands were ice cold, but they were also soft and small, like her own. These hands had worked tirelessly and she loved them just a little bit for that.

“I don’t believe for a second that you were unloved,” Niko says firmly. “Sometimes people get caught up in their own stuff and have a hard time seeing things. But, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t love you.”

The spectral hands she held in her own squeezed, sending a cold ache up Niko’s arms. The woman’s face was folded into bittersweet lines.

“You’re right,” she sighed. “Of course you’re right. Perhaps I’m the one who is ‘caught up’ as you said.”

“Maybe,” Niko agreed with a tilt of her head. “It happens to the best of us.”

“Quite,” the woman agreed with a wet sniff.

Then, the room was flooded with a soft blue light.

“Edwin!” Charles shouted, spinning around Edwin in the fastest circles that Niko had seen yet.

“Don’t wait for me! Just go!” Edwin shouted back, already speeding off through the wall in what Niko thought was probably the direction of the foyer.

“I have to go,” Niko said, turning back to the woman’s ghost. She was frowning in confusion at the wall that Charles and Edwin had just disappeared through. “But, a nice woman should be coming to talk to you soon. You should listen to what she has to say,” Niko explained, climbing back to her feet.

The woman nodded, turning toward where the blue light was strongest. She looked younger and happier, the light washing years off of her lined face.

“Yes, I will,” she said, not looking at Niko.

Niko gave the woman’s profile a smile. She would be okay. Niko had faith.

She exited through the door in the wall that Charles and Edwin had flown through. It lead to a hallway that took her back to the foyer with the piano in the floor.

“Niko! Thank God,” Edwin exclaimed, flying up to make his own nervous circles around her as Niko emerged at the top of the staircase.

“Hi, Edwin!” Niko said, happy to see him doing well. She cupped a hand around his orb and he obligingly settled into it, his touch giving her the scent of beeswax and the taste of honey. “I’m glad you two got away fast enough. I think our ghost friend will be okay now.”

“Glad you’re okay too, Niko,” Charles said warmly, settling his orb near Niko’s other shoulder. She cupped a gentle hand around him and smelled fresh cut grass and tasted sweet black tea.

The quiet moment was broken by Crystal slamming through the front door, her eyes wild, her hair a cloud of wayward curls flying around her head, and a huge pickaxe held in her hands. The outward facing side of the door had clearly seen the wrong end of said pickaxe, judging by the huge gouges in the ancient wood.

“Crystal!” Niko said happily, letting go of Edwin and Charles so that she could descend the stairs.

“Niko!” Crystal exclaimed, looking distinctly more ruffled than Niko herself. She threw the pickaxe to the side and then threw herself at Niko so hard that she nearly fell over backward. Crystal’s tears quickly soaked through the shoulder of Niko’s jacket and her thin strong arms were tacky with sweat. “God, don’t scare me like that! Do you have any idea what awful sounds that were coming from in here!?”

“Did it sound something like a piano falling through the floor?” Charles asked curiously.

His voice sounded much stronger than it had for the past two minutes, so Niko partially extracted herself from Crystal so she could look up at him. He and Edwin were both standing at the bottom of the stairs, now in their normal dead boy shapes.

“Oh. Yeah, it did,” Crystal said, turning from Niko to frown at the piano that was still partway through the floor a few feet from them.

“Aw,” Niko said, turning back toward Edwin and Charles. “No more orbs, huh? I’m going to miss Chorb and Orbwin.”

Charles’ eyes went huge with amusement while Edwin winced like he was in pain.

“Chorb!?” Charles shouted.

“No,” Edwin said faintly.

“And, Orbwin!?” Charles shouted.

“No, absolutely not,” Edwin said louder.

Charles turned to Edwin with a feral grin. “Chorb and Orbwin! Mate, that’s us. That’s our orb-sonas.”

Edwin squinted at him. “I don’t know what that is and I don’t want you to explain it to me this time.”

“Guys, this is cute and all, but can we please get out of here?” Crystal asked, looking frazzled. Niko reached out to hold her hand and felt blisters where the pickaxe handle must have rubbed her hands raw. Niko frowned and pressed Crystal’s hand tighter in her own.

“What an absolutely capital idea, Crystal,” Edwin said stiffly, walking across the foyer and toward the front door with long strides that made him look like he was gliding. Edwin had such a pretty way of moving. Niko really envied him that.

“We can get curry,” Niko suggested, giving Crystal’s hand a pat. “Charles knows a good place.”

“I’d like that,” Crystal sniffled, following Niko and Edwin out of the house.

“Oi, it’s been like forty years. The place probably isn’t still around,” Charles said doubtfully as he followed them out of the house.

But, Charles was wrong because the little curry place near his old school was still in business. Even though he couldn’t eat any of his favorite menu items, Niko was more than happy to order them and assure him that it was just as good now as it was back then. Charles looked a little misty eyed to hear that.

And Crystal fell asleep on her shoulder on the cab ride back into the heart of London. And Charles did eventually explain to Edwin what a -sona was, even if Edwin looked like he wanted to phase through the floor the whole time.